The Tank: Constellation Class
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 31 ก.ค. 2024
- The Constellation Class Starship is one of the first new ones introduced in Star Trek The Next Generation in the form of Captain Picard's first command, the USS Stargazer. The Ship design is an old one from the late 23rd century and the first four nacelle vessel we see, pioneering the warp coasting technology and establishing a new look for some Federation starships going forward. But did you know it was made to combat Klingons?
Chapters
00:00 Real Origins
01:34 Starfleet Origins
02:12 Mission Profile
03:39 Four Nacelles
05:13 Specifications
07:19 Summary
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This Video is for critical purposes with commentary. - เกม
I did not know the original Constellation class model used Macross and Gundam parts! Makes me want a whole Star Trek show from Sunrise even more now!
Won't happen. As Sunrise would want all the rights to Star Trek and if you dare make references to their version. They sue you. Just ask those who made Battletech. Though, yes, some models of mechs were literally Macross inspired mechs and still do exist in Battletech as the "Unseen". Sunrise tried to sue them into the ground and destroy any chance for anyone to make anything big giant stompy robot. Thankfully they lost back in the mid-2000s.
@Qardo battletech won the rights recentlyish and not only did they "reseen" ie redesign the problematic designs, they also can show the og ones but they just seem to avoid that, outside of cover arts, and iron wind metal models.
Meanwhile I was distracted by the way he pronounced "gun-dam". Like, that was the original intention of the word combination, but it's still funny to hear lol
@@Qardo BattleTech getting screwed with the Macross and other anime designs wasn't Sunrise. That was Harmony Gold. Sunrise has consistently been reported as being cool with it and signing off on it and being just as annoyed with Harmony Gold's bullshit as FASA and the West were.
Broadly speaking the rights weren't sold well. Cause at the same time, Harmony gold still holds the rights to macross over here. So that is specifically a harmony gold case.@@Qardo This is also a reminder: fuck harmony gold.
“How many shuttlebays does the Constellation want?”
- “Yes”.
The Constellation also has a Niche of being somewhere in the stories of famous Starfleet Officers and Captains of the 24th and 25th Century.
The Stargazer for Picard is the obvious, but there’s also the Hathaway for Riker, the Victory for La Forge, the Constance for Liam Shaw, and Even Kathryn Janeway served on the Billings as a Commander. (Yes, the Billings appeared as a Constellation with the number “NCC-3907” in a Beta-Canon Comic.)
The Constellations must’ve been pretty reliable starships.
"An overworked, underpowered vessel. Always on the verge of collapse." - Jean Luc Picard
Which is weird, because the stats don't seem to reflect that. Maybe the overwork had it operating outside of its specs too often and for too long?
Maybe just Stargazer?
I imagine Starfleet just didn’t give it a strong enough engine to power all of those extra systems like the 4 warp nacelles and two impulse drives. It's got 2x of everything compared to a Miranda or Constitution, but maybe it only has a 1.25x-size antimatter reactor - if you turn on everything at once you’re going to either stall out or blow a fuse
Because the ship was outdated by picards time. You can see even in DS9 the galaxy go from one of the mightiest ships in the federation armada to barely holding on in any battle or conflict.
Reminds me of the later _California_ class: durable, capable, but unglamorous. Real workhorse ships.
GIven the carrying capacity, I could see the Constellation being an excellent troop carrier during the Cardassian Border Wars and later during the Dominion War.
Adopting this as my headcanon for why we didn't see any Constellations in DS9, thanks.
ye, given the more peacefull nature of the Federation, i imagined that it's ideal for evac situations when you can't use Transporters or to evacuate just more when they can be somewhere faster then others
I’ve seen in several fan stories the Constellation actually used as a fighter carrier alongside the Curry-class
@@TimberWolf99We know that at least one was being used at the time thanks to LCARs
@@TimberWolf99 We know some were active during the Dominion War as the Victory was listed on the casualty report board in “In The Pale Moonlight”.
Memory Alpha disagrees with me on this, but I like to think the Constellation mentioned in “The Abandoned” was the class prototype.
I always thought the Stargazer was such an awesome looking ship, it's so unlike most of the other ships in the series. There are only a few starships I would describe as "stout," but this is one of them. Gimme that chunky Constellation look, Steve!
I love that he mentioned the Macross kits. The 2 large bulbs on the underside are from Orguss. The angular 'battle' bridge on the top is a 1/72 back of a VF-1 Valkyrie.
Always loved the design of the Constellation class. It looks durable and practical. Like it is really living up to the purpose of Starfleet which is peaceful exploration.
Those enormous bay doors around the saucer make me think this class was used to carry smaller vessels en masse, like a "warp ferry." By using the warp coasting method, those smaller ships could get to a hub destination much faster than on their own engine's power. The added advantage being that each ship's crew could maintain and repair their ships while in transit without losing any time.
All of its shuttle bays makes the Constellations looks like a hybrid starship-spacestation... which I like. It's like that coworker who when they arrive... real work starts getting done.
Makes no sense. When the Stargazer put in a lot of freaking work. I mean a lot.
The numbered bay doors reminds me of Thunderbirds. :)
@@originaluddite Captain Virgil Tracy arriving at a planet with many "pod machines" to rescue an away team trapped in a cave or something
@@RockyRailroadProductions_B0SS exactly. :)
@@originaluddite We didn't see how a lot of Federation underground bases etc were built (Regula I, and the hospital from that DS9 episode where Jake Sisko goes with Dr. Bashir to a warzone spring to mind) but I'm certain they used a "Mole"-like thing.
We're not gonna talk about the lack of a deflector dish?
was thinking the same.. no main navigational main deflector!… same with miranda though… so that was integrated somehow maybe?
@@cjadams7434intergrated ram, intergrated deflector. Hopefully not as bad.
Honestly it seems like Starfleet just has these generational bursts where they'll create a new technology and just suddenly create an entire generation of ships around it.
Really wish Cryptic would get off their asses and release a T6 version of the Constellation class! I could really see a T6 Constellation variant taking on a Flight-Deck Carrier role given the numerous and massive hangers it has.
Yes yes yes yes yes.
yesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyes❤
14th Anniversary is incoming in a few weeks 😁
Constellation, Miranda, Excelsior, Constitution refit, all amazing ships. Unique with threads of commonality, They've got the right level of whimsical and practical I think.
For me I've always loved the Miranda class. When I was 3 or 4 I remember watching Wrath of Kahn the first time and just loving the design of the ship. It didn't give a presence of authority like the Constitution for reasons I can't exactly place, but it seemed nimble, sleek, purposeful in a lot of ways that it's stuck in my mind.
Something I only just noticed on the model is that the Constellation Class features two double torpedo emplacements like seen on the neck of the Enterprise refit (giving it a total of 4 forward and 4 aft launchers). As such, I would expect it to be extremely capable in a fight and probably able to carry out a role similar to a torpedo destroyer or torpedo boat from World War 2. As such I would expect these to be charging the enemy lines launching a volley of 4 torpedoes as it came into range and another 4 as it withdrew back to friendly lines (hopefully before the enemy could burn through the shields).
I have kitbashed one of these that lives on my desk - The saucer is thick enough to hide the light batteries onboard. Mine is named "USS Constellation 1017-A" and is destined to be swallowed by another giant doomsday machine. Headcanon is that Will Decker from The Motion Picture was captain of it for some time. On my model, I have the front shuttle bay doors modelled open.
Great lore, and many useful closeups on the ship for reference!
Always thought that chunky saucer made it look like an ice cream sandwich with warp nacelles.
The number and size of those shuttle bays has ling made me wonder how many Constellations were used as hospital/triage ships in their era.
The Constellation Class was always one of my favorite TNG designs.
While it would have been interesting to see a Constitution Class in TNG, I'm glad they went with a different design.
It's the Federation workhorse.
A cheaper jack of all trades for them to spam out and prop up their numbers.
Thanks for providing consistent top quality content!
This class became my favorite Starfleet ship class. I love the TOS movie era ship designs and the knowledge that many of that era's ships were still in service during TNG.
I wish we'd gotten a Star Trek series or movies set during the lost era in the 90s.
Thank you for this vid.
Every time I see the head-on view, I can't help thinking someone stuck a bunch of Star Trek model parts onto the back of a Roomba. 😀
I wonder if there is any lore regarding the virtue of the Constellation's redundant systems with regards to wartime. Because it is essentially a 'double ship' theoretically it can suffer substantial system loss and still fight.
If the Constellation had a two of the same model of impulse drives as the Constitution upgrades, that means it's got twice the thrust in real space. Sure, it has higher mass, but it's still going to have at least 25%, probably closer to 50%, more acceleration. Some run to the call, but these sprint.
I thought it was established those were not shuttlebays, but modular mission bays, allowing for huge sections to be swapped out based on mission undertaken.
Thats the first time ive heard of that but its a great idea. Specialist sections that can swapped out when needed depending on the type of mission.
Never heard of this concept either.. but it's an interesting one.
That's what I've heard as well, with even different modelling on the bits to show different modules.
Shuttlebays wouldn't make any sense anyway, they would all be separated and small, it would be a inefficient use of internal space and introduce a lot of weak points in the hull.
Also at the time thanks to the success of the mission pods on the Miranda class, Starfleet had a bit of an obsession with swappable pods and modules.
It's a room with power, agrav, and life support with a door into space. Even if it wasn't designed as a multimission support bay, there's absolutely no reason to imagine the first captain of one didn't get engineering to run extra power and modular berth hookups to at least one bay so it could be cleared out and equipment dropped in for whatever the mission called for.
While the idea of modular mission bays sounds in theory I doubt it would work out in practise. Even if swapping such is relatively easy and can be done in little time, the module needs to be kept ready, the starship needs to go where the module is and once the fitting module is installed, it needs time to go where the mission is. The further a ship is away from the nearest facility capable of swapping and storing mission modules, the less likely swapping a module is worth the time and effort to travel back and forth in order to it. If picking up the ideal modules to evacuate a planet adds an extra week to the response time, there might be no one left to evacuate.
I've taken to looking at the Constellation as the Miranda class's Much bigger brother since they follow a similar geometry and, when you think about it the Constellation can do everything a Miranda can but with extra options.
Kitbash ships are really the most realistic ships in Star Trek. As someone who designs and 3d prints things I use in daily life I can tell ya I more often than not I piece together a design from other people's designs taking the elements I find useful and incorporating them into my design. If you are trying to build something useful you can spend all day trying to create it from scratch and hope it works. Or you can save a ton of time and take what you know works and adapt is to fit your design. Even if intentionally the Kitbash ships brought this realistic practical engineering approach to the Star Trek universe.
Star Trek shows us a future in which there is no problem we can't overcome. Aside from yellowing plastic (as seen on the model of the Stargazer near 0:43). Jokes aside, great video as always! :)
Love this design!
One of my favorite ships... one that polar lights needs to make a model of in 1/1000 scale... or even 1/2500. All the versions ive seen have a much thinner saucer. Which is a shame.
Thank you for the fantastic video! And happy new year!
ive never been a fan of this ship and this class was at first the reason i was not a fan of 4 nacalle ships but that have changed over the years speial with ships like the awesome nimitz class or sagen class
I would love to see a new TV series about the USS Constellation, to follow Star Trek Enterprise!
now i'm torn between an HD Constellation Class in the TMP Era or having an TOS Style one
i mean outside the Movies there are not really much of that Era in Star Trek
I see Constellation, I hit like 🥰
Heh, the problem with that Response Fleet idea is that the Federation never seems to have enough ships anywhere to form one. There's usually just 3-9 ships that can arrive hours or days too late to be useful.
Love your series. Keep creating!
Ironically, the yellow Constellation-class model does not actually appear in "The Battle" as it was replaced with a silver Constitution-class model because of the aforementioned plan for the _Stargazer_ to be of that class before deciding to make a new ship based on the yellow model.
A comparison video of both the original and Sagan class would be interesting
Love it. STO needs a T6
Given the stout frame and fairly impressive weapons load I'm getting proto-Defiant class vibes from the Constellation. Tough little ship for the era.
Awesome, doing a video on my STO main and trusted ship!
Pretty resilient explorer as a combat vessel
Well done, that was a remarkably thorough and detailed breakdown of a very much lesser-known ship. What makes your efforts extra impressive, of course, is that the original information was produced by disinterested children with arts degrees and starkly limited knowledge outside of their specialties. Thus you have a ship with six apparent hanger-bays, but which is supposedly only issued two shuttles.
5:13 I really like the music choice in this section, whatever it is. I would not mind hearing it in future videos! Merry Spockmas, and a Logical New Year 🖖❤️
Off topic but i would really like to see a repair and recovery starfleet ship. Like a space tow truck with a really gruff crew. it could be the hero ship of Star Trek: R&R, a workplace comedy like the office.
100th comment here, I have to say this is my absolute favorite ship. I am not sure why but it just speaks to me. It makes sense for some weird reason.
i really love this ship great job rick😊
🖖😎👍Very cool and very nicely greatly well done and very well informatively explained and executed in every detail way shape and format provided on the Constellation class starship's and on all of its functions and abilities and duties and missions required of it as well as of its various weapons and shielding and warp capabilities, A job very fabulously well done indeed Sir!, and I myself love this design and own various different models of this ship in plastic,die cast and pewter!👌.
Ive always looked at this ship as someone in Starfleet fook one look at the Excelsior and miranda ships and said take a miranda a nd make it a a heavy cruiser like the excelsior and i guess i was right. Whats interesting is i went off of Picards description of the star gazer and how it was over taxed which to me meant that the small ship struggled at times producing the power it need for the warp drive and other systems. Maybe his ship was just worn out but to me it would make sense given its size and what not.
Happy new year! And hopefully we will get a lot of star trek content in 2024!
Hits very hard
Visually, it looks like it has 6 twin phaser banks along with 4 single emitters along the edge of the dorsal saucer (This doesn't appear to repeat ventrally)
I'm a suckered for 4 nacelle designs.
I never really thought of it as a tank until this video. Makes sense though.
I'm really hoping we get a T6 or Legendary for this ship this year.
*EARLYYYYYYY! :D* Constellation was always an interesting one- probably top of the line when it was first made, but near-obselete by the time Picard set foot on her.
I really wish a large model kit of this ship existed.
With that many shuttle bays, it could act like an aircraft carrier in space.
@Certifiably Ingame A silly thought : What if the little robot on the underside of the Constellation class is an auxiliary craft much like The Intrepid class's Aeroshuttle ?
I feel like this is a proto akira, more comparable to an aircraft carrier
I’ve been a fan of this class for a while, because they seem like such an obvious response to the Excelsior’s teething problems. Just take the proven technology of the Constitution refit and upscale its use. Makes total sense.
Lots of torpedos and shuttles. I think this is a lot more like an Akira, only with 4 naceles.
My headcanon was always that Starfleet was hedging their bed on Excelsior with Constellation. Since Excelsior was so advanced, they built a second ship at the same time, Constellation, at a different yard using proven off-the-shelf parts developed for the Enterprise refit.
Picard's "overworked and underpowered" comment leads me to believe that Constellation was built to do too many things, and really needed a sharp crew to get the most out of it.
Where abouts does it hide its deflector dish? (Great work as always)
Happy New Year.
STO give me a Legendary Constellation already so I can fly this bird! I’ve always wanted to kit up some TWOK uniforms and play this lost era of Starfleet.
Happy New Year
The only time we ever hear of a Constellation class ever being in battle is Picard at the Battle of Maxima.
Sounds like it would make a good tank class in the world of Warcraft!!
im sure there must be subclasses of her that have that hull a lot more gutted to make her a proper fast-response thru-deck carrier for shuttles and fighters. In spirit, with her size and capabilities, she's a spiritual ancestor to the Galaxy Class.
And now we have the Radiant class in canon, the TOS era predecessor of the constellation class
6:12 Yoyodyne makes warp cores? Are their designs based on Emilio Lizardo's Ocillation Overthruster?
This pronunciation of "Gundam" takes me back to the time that one they dubbed Bright Noa with a British accent because he's from Hong Kong.
A good design for a workhorse starship.
How cool thinking about it would it have been if Picard captained a Constitution class starship like Kirk? Would have given themselves something to talk about in Generations for sure.
please do a video on "the captains yacht" featured in one of the picard episodes.
From before the days of JJ "I don't understand how viewscreens work" Abrams, and as such an immediately superior design to anything made since 2009.
where is the Deflector dish at on that ship?
hi love the ship video and your online game play here an idea for any video if you ware asked to head a star trek show set between star trek 6 and tng what ship class would you pick and what kind of crew would she have
🎆🎇 Happy New Year 🎇🎆
Great video as always. So here's one thing that stands out, where is the deflector array? Doesn’t the class still need to repel space debris to prevent damage while flying?
It'll likely have a distributed deflector, same as the Miranda refit
@@Panzercommander121 good point, i forgot about that
At some point will you do the USS Nautilus? It looks like a tadpole.
With it's max warp being a respectable 9.2, it's cruise being 6, and warp-coasting allowing it to get the max out of the older engine designs... I have serious questions about why the Stargazer was mothballed. Unless it had some kind of issue like irreparable spaceframe fractures, or some other onboard system that couldn't be replaced was unsafe, it's a damn useful ship no matter what you need.
Do you need to evacuate a base or small colony? Constellation has transporters and multimission spaces that can both hold/launch shuttles AND be converted to dorms for an impressive evac load.
Do you have a bunch of systems to survey and want to drop survey stations at each of them? Instead of deploying a bunch of ships, or god forbid some Galaxy classes, just convert the front bay on a Constellation into a bulk manufactory for structural elements and leave a base and shuttle craft with the survey corps personnel in each system. After deploying everything, you can pick the staff who didn't find anything cool up and convert the stations into little relays and sensor platforms.
Are you completely fucked after the battle of Wolf359 and lack ships to hold off the Cardassian/Dominion Alliance? You can either have a troop carrier for securing the surface of a contested world, an engineering carrier to repair/resupply forward bases or help refugees, and a potential spacefighter carrier - no need to wait for a Prometheus-class, you can multi-vector all your assaults right now!
This is absolutely the Hufflepuff of Starfleet ship designs. It gets shit done and people tend to forget that it's a goddamn BADGER and knows six ways to fuck up your day if it needs to. Starfleet should be flying these things until they die. I love the Cerritos, but I would squee if the California-2 class was based on this fat saucer utility ship design, 4-nacelle or not.
Warp core by Yoyodyne? Do they have a shipyard around Planet Ten?
I bet a lot of the ship designers in universe also when coming up with new looks just play with some of the models kits they have in ready rooms and just construct
Voyager should have built more nacelles in the Delta.
I chuckled when you said yoyodyne... Was the design pioneered by Dr. John Bigbooty?
Yes, but was Sisko responsible for its design.
Kidding, I'm kidding. Love how you owed up for your mistake. Happy New Year Certifiably Ingame - love your vids and your humility. See you in 2024!
I had thought it was smaller than that.
No Deflector Dish? Or did i miss it.
I must have missed something. Where's the main deflector?
I've always been partial to the Constellation Class design.
Where is the main deflector dish ?
Doesn't it need a main deflector dish in order to well , 'deflect' things while at warp !
Now that I know more of the technical specs I kind of like it .
I guess it's kind of like a long-range light Cruiser or frigate .
It has no main Deflector 🤨
It has deflector emitters like the _Mirandas_
People get the TOS/TMP era designs confused with the integrated deflector/dish of TNG. The deflector units were separate from the sensor dish on the older ships
Was the constellation class the last of the designs to use that Constellation refit/Miranda/Excelsior refit design language? It is convenient ;) that federation ships come in waves of design type, but it also makes a lot of sense from a practical standpoint, so I really can't say anything bad about it. Really you can look at any tech through time and tell it's from a period or era, especially in the advent of machinery.
It's never directly addressed, but I always assumed that the bursts happen whenever the top level of the starship engineering community dies of old age or fully retires. It's already said that "Science progresses one funeral at a time." I could see the design ideas of specific generations that coincide with big tech improvements and starship need getting "fossilized" because the engineers who introduced them like the design language and know how to make it do what they want.
@@bearnaff9387 and indeed Leah Brahms was pretty young and seemed quite influential in producing those lozenge-shaped nacelles (not just on the Galaxy and Intrepid plus some of the First Contact ships, but also the runabouts and a bunch of shuttles, and some cargo carriers). Presumably she invented a differently-shaped warp coil or something.
I thought she was built at the copernicus shipyard on luna and yoyodyne shipyard. Also on the moon
I like to see one with 6 or maybe 4 but with 2 hidden for emergencies
I thought Picard said it was under powered and overworked? Unless that was by the mid-24 century, meaning that vessels were under powered by mid-24 century standards and since Star Fleet hadn't created a replacement vessel that could do all the things Constellation Class ships could do. Meant that the Stargazer and her sister ships were constantly deployed, rather than being upgraded like she really needed to be. Though other fans have taken the under powered and overworked line to mean the class as a whole was failure and Star Fleet was trying to many things at once with the Constellation Class (yet again) and so the class as whole was a failure.