Unified Starship Design Theory

Basically, If you really really think about it, there is only one original starship: The original Constitution Class. All other starships are kitbashes, in one form or another, based on and reconfigured around, that first design, all ships thereafter are just rearrangements of that first starship blueprint. But that of course is fine, if they didn't look this way Trek wouldn't be Trek - it's the show's signature, the good old saucer and two nacelles, etc.

For instance, many classes of ship look contrived, from one class to another, such as the Nebula Class next to the Galaxy - many aspects of those two ships have identical features, but they're obviously separate class ships with separate deployment agendas. Look at the Miranda and the refit Connie, again, virtually identical hull components, slightly rearranged. Starfleet's been doing this for years, it's no different in the 24th century, with certain class ships spawning similar variants. I call this concept 'starship families'. This refers to the era and grouping of vessels sharing similar features and technologies. The Miranda, Ptolemy and so forth are of the Constitution family, the Centaur (an as yet unknown class) could well be of the Excelsior family, the New Orleans, Nebula, Challenger etc are of the Galaxy family. Similarly the more recent Prometheus has Intrepid design elements, so perhaps this class of ship is of the Intrepid family, as would the Yeager-type ( a horrible kitbash). Also the Nova Class shares certain similarities to the Sovereign family and so forth.

Once in a while though a radical new concept ship comes along, hence establishing a new family. The Galaxy Class is once such example (which may even have started with the New Orleans, so this could actually be called the New Orleans family...), the Intrepid is another. Even though the Intrepid is relatively small, being a Medium Cruiser in my book, it's at least possible that there is an even larger Intrepid-type which started the whole family off in the 2360's. Could perhaps the so far unseen Bradbury Class be such a candidate?

There are of course exceptions to every rule. In the last few years we've seen some remarkably unorthodox ships designs, such as the Norway and Steamrunner classes. The Sabre Class you may get away with attributing to the Defiant family, if there is one, and the Akira obviously hails back to the NX Class (a bitter debate I shan't go into here).

About kitbashes: Those that complain about 'kitbashes' are those that want to only want to see cool and radical ships, but aren't seeing the established big picture of starship design spanning two centuries or more. When I'm doing my 3D starship design, I would look at the era I'm designing for, first of all. Let's take a unknown class design as an example of this - Rigel Class. The ships we know of this class (the USS Tolstoy and USS Akagi) are in the NCC 62*** region. It may be that these ships are new batches of vessels of an older class (the Rigel prototype hailing back even further), but it also, and more promisingly suggests that this is a class of ship from the Galaxy/Nebula/New Orleans Class time-frame, so basically I would suspect that the Rigel is a kind of pre-Galaxy, with a similar elliptical saucer configuration. It would perhaps be ignorant of me to design something fantastically radical and 'new', because when back-designing a starship class that predates what we already know, I personally would adhere to already established design concepts for the particular era in question. As far as Starfleet goes, totally original designs could be something that perhaps are only occasionally experimented with in waves of once every decade or so. I'd expect such ships as these to be capital ships, such as Heavy Cruisers and Explorers, which eventually spawn other starship classes as design variants which fulfil other fleet applications, such as Medium Cruiser, Frigate, Destroyer etc. For instance, from the design lineage I speculate, the Hokule'a Class is an Excelsior variant, being a Medium Cruiser variant to its Excelsior big brother. Similar can be said for Apollo Class, which might a Frigate variant of its larger Ambassador Class relative.

So, are all starships just boring, unimaginative kitbashes? Well no, not exactly. Kitbashes though are all good and fine, it's what Starfleet does! But there are two very separate concepts here. A) A kitbash, such as the Nebula being a kitbash of the Galaxy. No problems there - this was the latest design style and latest technologies of the time, so it stands to reason that the new classes being commissioned at that time are going to share a similar appearance, just like a couple of decades later the Sovereign will have her variants, such as Nova Class.

And then B) 'KitS-Bashes.' This is where we see completely separate starship designs being thrown together, sometimes from completely different eras (or even other sci-fi universes!). The Yeager and Elkins-types from DS9 embody this perfectly, (the Yeager secondary hull is a model component of a 20th century fighter jet!), and as such they are the only ships that I actually don't like. They're abominations.

There's also C), which I'm going to explore here. This is what this page is all about - starship configurations. This refers to starship design themes, via lineage. For example the Prometheus shares a common lineage with the Constellation - they have four nacelles. Similarly the Galaxy Class (saucer, secondary hull and two raised nacelles) follows the same lineage as the Ambassador, and the Constitution before it... and so on.

Ignoring for a minute the position and shape of the secondary hull, and concentrating on the saucer and the nacelles, which is the important thing to take note of here, take a look at these basic pictures to help demonstrate the various types of saucer-based starships, and the common configurations they employ. There are seven key types. As you will see, much regarding the style of the ships of the fleet that we know of use common themes from one class to the next: A Disc, connected to a Tube, connecting to the Nacelles. How these appear in both shape and size is down to styles and technology of the era they're from. But the basic shape is there in all of them. The number of nacelles varies as well, as we shall see... But these are the seven types that originated the common starship design lineage.

-Please excuse the crudity of these model pictures, they're only done in the most basic way to convey a point...

This is the common starship type we are all used to, and the benchmark for many, many starship types to come. Ship classes that we definitely know of that fall into this category are:

Constitution Class

Excelsior Class

Ambassador Class

New Orleans

Galaxy Class

Sovereign Class

Nova Class

This is probably the second most familiar starship configuration. Again, the important thing to note is the nacelle orientation to the primary hull, a tangible secondary hull in this configuration may or may not appear... Canon types in this design fashion include:

*On close inspection the Intrepid nacelles are sunken below the Z axis of the ship.

^The name of this Intrepid kitbash is uncertain, but the model photo indicates the name 'USS Elkins' (More)

*The four-nacelle Excelsior study model (at least one exists) has been seen in the Wolf 359 Graveyard scene as well as the Qualor II surplus depot.

Type -5 configuration has only has one known member so far, but it's highly plausible that other, earlier starships possibly began the trend.

The three-nacelle ships can be a contentious area, but it's not something that bothers me. Some of the three nacelled ships have the nacelles in slightly varying configurations... Here's three such classes that fall into this category:

*The Federation Class is a canon class in my view. The Medusa is certainly a canon ship, but whether it was mass produced as an actual class, it is not known.

...after all, the design-type spans all the way from the Saladin in the early 23rd century to the Freedom in the mid-24th.

This is an ambiguous one. It basically describes a saucer or saucer-like structure with two nacelles either side, with no, or virtually no secondary hull. Sometimes the nacelles can be slightly raised or lowered, but the important thing here is they emanate from the central body of the ship, not a separate secondary hull unit.

As you might be guessing, there's still a missing piece to the puzzle. That's the ships which don't have, or are not based on saucers.

This is the primary example of what I mean. There may be others, such as freighters, tankers etc. that we haven't seen. But this is the Daedalus-style family with spherical primary hulls. One could speculate that this design was not dropped in the 22nd century after the Daedali were phased out, as it does appear on the Olympic Class. So perhaps there are intermediary classes of this configuration...?

Type nine is a more speculative addition, as you might be able to argue that the Oberth Class is a type unto itself...

This basically shows the Oberth configuration, often referred to as a Surveyor, or Science Vessel. The secondary hull here could in fact be a detachable 'sensor pod'. The only other starship type that comes close to resembling this configuration is the Springfield Class, with the pod undercarriage and the raised nacelles. This is a Surveyor too, and may well be an attempt to carry the baton on for the aging Oberth fleet.

Here's a look at some of the starships that fall under the key configuration types. In some respects they do seem to be grouped together, ie, the primary starship type, type-1, with raised nacelles seem to include flagship Capital Cruisers, such as the old Constitution Class, and today's Explorers. Type-2's seem to be mostly be Heavy Cruisers, and type-3's and 4's can be largely warships, such as Special Assault Tactical ships and Destroyers.

Some of these starship classes have speculative designs, ie Korolev Class, and Renaissance Class, etc. But, as a member of the ASDB, and a partner site, I'm using some of our designs to further illustrate the point regarding starship configuration/lineage.

Some of the ship images used in these charts are my own starship CGI models. The rest are from other modellers and sources, such as EAS, the ASDB, and Sci-fi Art (now Scifi-Meshes).

The following is a chart which follows the themes of lineage and configuration through time, from the beginning of the Federation. Think of it as a family tree. Beneath each ship 'type' are the classes which belong to that type, and branches, where relevant, will extend out to connect with classes that they are connected to. For example, from classes such as the New Orleans and Galaxy, various classes of disparate types, such as Cheyenne, Freedom and Challenger and so forth, are linked by interconnecting 'family lines', because these are all part of the Galaxy family. The chart looks a little wild and complex, but the ends do tie up...

Studying the chart you can see that certain classes of ship begin families, kicking off a trend or style that is perpetuated in other types of ship. Let's say the New Orleans trend spawns a type 6 configuration of ship - the Freedom Class... These are the key families that I'm speculating on - these refer to the same era ship class, it's not in accordance to configuration. This that follows is a quick table with a few ships for example's sake, this all based though on era based families (some speculation involved).

Constitution family	Excelsior family	Ambassador family	Galaxy family	Bradbury family	Sovereign family
Constitution	Excelsior	Ambassador	Galaxy/New Orleans	*Bradbury?*	Sovereign
Ptolemy	Hokule'a?	Renaissance?	Nebula	Intrepid	Nova
Miranda	Centaur (type)	Niagara	Challenger	Prometheus
Soyuz	Curry	Apollo?	Freedom
Federation	Merced?	Mediterranean?	Springfield
Saladin/Hermes		Korolev?	Cheyenne
Constellation?			Rigel?

This basically outlines how I view the various starship configurations that we know to exist. All have followed the outlined configuration themes, in various forms. There are variations along the way, but they do adhere to the original theme. Such an example might be that modern starships seem to be a lot flatter, having the secondary hulls blended into the saucer, a la Sovereign, Prometheus, etc.

As I see it there are nine variations, not including the Daedalus family. These are primary, saucer-starships. Type 1 is probably most common, and many of this form would be the fleet spearheads, having Explorer-type deployments. Type 2 may have a more tactical role, the rest being cruisers perhaps. Type 5 may have nacelles in different positions, such as the Niagara which had two above, one below, but the theme is the same. Type 9 seems to be a specialised Surveyor ship, of which the Oberth and the latter day Springfield are members.

Basically, all starships are 'rearrangements' in one form another. There's enough about each class to make it a 'distinct class' of its own, reflecting technology, the era, and mission type. As the Galaxy family came into being the saucer suddenly became elliptical across the X axis. This is one such example of varying styles and fashions. Later, this changed to follow an elliptical shape down the Z axis, as with the Sovereigns and Intrepids. Indeed, the Nova and Prometheus seem to have taken on a more arrow-head shaped appearance. But anyway, this is my basic theory on how the ships of the fleet, over two hundred years, are structured via lineage, and family.


Type-1	Type-2	Type-3 and 5