I personally like to think the out of date warp nacelles are a result of either reusing older warp drives removed from other ships during refits or a result of secondary of outdated shipyards building without needing infrastructure updates.
I like to think that is because ease of maintenance because it's crew will be C level or just to ease freshly graduates to ships. And since it had short missions, crew would be constantly rotated so ease of maintenance and shear amount of fail safes would make it hard to break. 😅
The nacelles are just one element of a ship’s warp drive. There are also the warp core and the robustness of the hull to give just two examples. If you design a small ship whose warp core only provides power to get it to warp six or warp seven is all the hull can reliably take, why install nacelles that support speeds up to warp nine?
besides, nacelles aren't really that complicated, are they? They're almost structural, like they hold the weird energies the warp drive makes. In my headcanon It always seemed like re-engineing a old plane like a B-52 or C-130: the nacelles aren't the engines of a starship, they're the WINGS. Putting a new warp core into old nacelles would get you almost as much as replacing everything.
And then they blew it by disrespecting the flagship of the entire Federation in that game, giving us all of ten seconds with the Enterprise-F before saying "Oh, she's decommissioned scrap. Here's the REAL Enterprise. Meet the G." They said they did it to give us STO fans some recognition. Instead, they gave us a giant middle finger called the USS Enterprise-F, replacing her with the disgusting Neo-Connie Enterprise-G. (Presumably for Gross.) Most other Star Trek Enterprises seen in the series got at least a full episode dedicated to them. Enterprise-B got 30 minutes of Voyager, Enterprise-C got 30 minutes in TNG, and Enterprise F got ten seconds in Picard. I guess they just didn't want to pay the creator of the F royalties or something. Either way, massive disrespect just because it was from a game than one of CBS's own works. I was happy for STO when they released the ships into canon, but then they blew it by giving the flagship of Star Trek Online a huge middle finger. I'd rather see STO completely decanonized and go back to the status of Trek post-Into Darkness with nothing on TV, than ever see them pull another extremely disrespectful move like that.
@@TheOneTrueDragonKingI think it's more because Matalas has a hard on for the TOS/TMP Retro style, which is also why the Sagan and the non-STO 25th century ships in Picard S2 and S3 all look more old school and blocky instead of following the blended lines of the the TNG era ships. Such a fumble. If they'd renamed the Titan-A the Picard nobody would've complained and it would've fit perfectly with the scene.
@@3Rayfire Yes, that was the proper move. Name the Titan-A to Picard, not Enterprise. Needless to say if I ever meet Matalas in real life he's getting a punch in the jaw from me on behalf of all STO fans for his treatment of our beloved Enterprise-F. The only people who love the G are trolls.
It kinda feels like a callback to the ENT _Intrepid_ with the short aft section on the saucer and overhanging nacelles, just with the underslung secondary hull.
While looking at this video i wondered what the TMP-era refit of this class would look like, even found some images of it and it looks quite nice. Could go quite well alongside the Columbia class.
One of the best TOS era ships out there, loved it so much that I bought the "Bigger Brother" of that class. The Ranger-Class Battlecruiser, same design of a circle saucer with small secondary hull and 2 nacelles but connected via a beam. Wonder if that could be a next Breakdown video?
Although unique designs a great too. I love ships that fit so well with other designs, looking like they use large amounts of the same components as other ships. It feels practical and that makes it feel so real. These TOS designs are so classy, The Miranda class almost looks better as TOS than TMP.
I thin both are great, I like to think the Miranda was originally launched late into TOS around 2270 as a general workhorse ship, eventually like the Connie it got refit to the movie era style, but the Connie was an older ship, and maybe just something about how it was constructed made it harder to upgrade and mainain, the only reason they served so long was I guess out of pride, but eventually they just went on too long, meanwhile the Miranda was much newer and desighned for better modularity, thus upgraded easier. Starships arn't like see ships, on Earth, sea ships liek the Nimitz AIrcraft Carrier need special docks and often need to have large chunks removed for huge upgrades. But starships can be different, with stuff liek teleporters and Replicators plus zero gravity of space means they can likely be much easier to refit, plus just technology advancing anyway means Humanity in the future just has much better methods of construction.
I’m guessing that when the designer(s) labeled the the hull with NCC-1501 and added the Cage-era “antenna”-like probes to the warp nacelles, he probably intended this to be a slightly earlier vessel than the Enterprise NCC-1701. But the writers possibly didn’t pick up on that-and made it a younger vessel.
It is an older ship and anyone who claim otherwise is wrong. Though it could be argued that it maybe has same treatment as Daedalus class, what after long absence. Was pulled from mothball and refitted in series of modern gunboats used as far as in 25'th century. If Pioneer was made in significant numbers, they could also be restored in service, after Klingon War. Even in Starfleet Museum it make more sense as representative of Bonaventure Era.
I'm also a big fan of the Pioneer along with the other TOS designs in STO. I think they did a great job of maintaining the original series lines/asthetics without resorting to just nacelle/pylon repositions like you see too commonly in SFB and, to a lesser extent, FASA trek.
@@peterhans3791they are trying to sell their other property too us. Why would you be mad about that? I'd be more mad that it has bad writing, and crap science! Their ship designs are OK... if you disregard the fact that they are supposed to be TOS era... nevermind.. keep going. I agree. Appreciate their capitalist tendency though. Never doubt a self described socialist to be a true Ferengi.
That is what happens when paramount holds the purse strings. They wanted Discovery to be the new go to show, so that is what licences got approved first.
@@littlekong7685 The Crossfield was introduced at T6. It never had a lower-tier version. This is because it's a "hero ship", the main craft of a franchise series. The only ship Paramount limited was the T6 Connie - can't get that in the Z-store except in the Legendary bundle, at their insistence.
When I was a kd I wanted to make a sci-fi film with my uncle's camcorder. My cousin wanted to put it in movie-era Star Trek, jst so he could captain an Excelsior Class. I vaguely remember naming that USS Pioneer.
I haven't played STO in a long time but I've always wished they would have some sort of event or something where you could design your own starship from scratch for each faction even if it was a lesser ship
I loved this little ship. I challenged a buddy to run the entire story using it (up to a point). It was fun, and we only used reward gear as we went along, however we did find the need to get crafted max stuff eventually. We both upgraded to T6 Conies for the end game content. We considered going NX refit since it looks a lot closer to the Pioneer but the skin didn't match the TOS era feel.
Goes without saying, I love it. It has the feeling of a ship where things happen like.. Gotta ferry these things quickly, hurr hurry. Whops sorry didn't mean to bump into you Engineer. Oh hey Doc, going to the mess? STuff like that.
it's all TOS detail except its got Refit torpedo launchers in the front! But it's got Pilot-era spikes hehe. I like it, it's like they were using it to test out random stuff for upgrades on other ships. I like this Ortiz guy's designs.
I loved this design, the biggest problem with STO is that the TOS story is just a glorified tutorial, I’d love to get a chance to explore everything/anything from the original series, you can’t tell me there’s not enough to base plenty of missions on! 🍻❤️🛸
All of the STO designs for the TOS era were fantastic additions to the fleet. The Pioneer, Perseus, Ranger, and Gemini, not to mention the Atlas dreadnaught, are absolutely gorgeous ships. They're simple enough that they fit the era very well, yet different enough to add a level of variety that the TOS fleet sadly never had in its day. By the time the Miranda and Excelsior came around, they had already moved past this design aesthetic. The Miranda prototype that they added as a legendary ship in STO is also beautiful, a perfect precursor to such an iconic ship.
Ah, the atlas. I love that ship. It feels like the TOS answer to 'you and what army?'. Just so massive (for its time) and imposing, that its opponents wished they were facing a constitution class.
@@SpartacusRyuuou Technicality it is just a different incarnation of the Proxima and Hoover hulls. I don't know if more annoying are Trek or Star Wars Genwunners?
Despite my comment on the Pathfinder, I do see why youre focusing on this Era, Ric. Needs filling in. Cant wait to other classes in this era either. Ranger, Bonaventure, Perseus, Farragut, Gemini, Radiant, Nelson, Larson, Northampton, Chandley, Destroyat, Loknar and many more. 😊😊 These videos are great, Ric. Truly. Keep em coming, man!!!
Out of curiosity, where did you get the info on things like warp speeds from? Is that fan created? No issues if it is but I never saw much technical data from STO on the ship that wasn't described using in-game terms.
Fun fact: You can actually use your older T1 Constitution-class if you have purchased it or even the T6 Legendary Miracle Worker Constitution-class right off the bat, while still in the TOS missions if you go to the shipyard at 23rd Century Earth Space Dock. So technically the Pioneer doesn't even last long enough to get through the 23rd Century missions.
If we really want to get technical, the pioneer is still in your fleet even after the TOS arc ends. It s just that a T1 is going to have a very bad time in more advanced content.
i love TOS style ships, there is just something about them that the ships from other periods do not have (i certainly like other periods too, but those other ship styles just lack a certain "magic" that the TOS style has). i generally liked TOS the least storywise out of all the star trek series i have watched so far, but in terms of ship style TOS era is my favorite
The Pioneer's support roll makes it sound like the California-class of the 23rd century. I'd like to see this ship make an appearance in SNW. We definitely need more ship variety from that era -- not just the Constitution, Miranda, and later Excelsior classes.
@@SpartacusRyuuou Trek classification work differently then video game logic, as it was based on actual pre-75's reclassification system of US Navy. Conie was always quite small. Excelsior was the medium size ship of Federation. Even if Galaxy is still unusually large, there were massive ships in Starfleet service before that. Proxima, Arc Royal, Ulysses, not to mention Yamato class. Discovery ships have only same size as Excelsior (Sombra class has also similar back of the saucer, implying connection). Detail a lot of people miss is that Engle and Nimitz have same hull tyle as Cheyenne.
The design of this Pioneer Class vessel would have look so much better without that secondary hull. The deflector dish should have been applied to the saucer.
I love the STO TOS ships, they were desighned pretty well keeping the TOS style but rearranging parts to make them each stand out enough. I really hate Discovery, one of the biggest issues with it for me is that I do like the ship desighns for the Klingons (should have been used for a different race) and Starfleet, the problem I have with them is that the STD era ship desighns while great, look way to advanced asthetically for the time period, especially being set 10 years before TOS, now that the Pioneer is canon how we saw it in STO, this makes more of a continuity headache as the registries make it clear that the Pioneer was made alongside the STD classes, confusing even more thanks tot he Crossfield registeries being 1031-2, yet they seem specifically made for the SPore Drive, which was only recently beign developed. So here's my explanation, there were being made 2 main starship desighns, the STD style and TOS style, STD being easier to upgrade, but the TOS style being more durable and reliable, I like to the the Connie was built with the TOS style, but eventually the STD style became more common so the COnnie was refit to that desighn and tech, with TOS ships being put more on the frontier space, this is why they were absent from the Klingon War, but the STD ships took heavy losses in the war, and over the next 10 years were mothballed for the TOS desighns, and maybe something happened like a computer virus that renedered many ships crippled, and so the 3 powers had to strip down their tech to a bit less advanced, the TOS era ships. Not as advanced, but not as vulnerable as the STD era ships, with th COnnies being refit back to this original desighn. Honestly for now this is my headcanon to make sense of this mess Discovery made, one of my expectations for SNW is for it to eventually have things logically shoft to how it appears in TOS, maybe this conflict with the Gorn causes some cultural shift for people to have the TOS hairstyles and uniforms, I don't know, I just expect them to eventually have this happen.
This is definitely my favorite TOS design. But I always find it a bit funny how in the lore, these objectively more geometrically complex designs are regarded as "easier to build" or requiring less resources or something. I guess it goes to show how actually simple and iconic most of the "main" ship designs are. You just can't really get more simple than the Connie.
I hope we get to see a Pioneer in SNW, not one made with the existing SNW style, but straight up the TOS style. The Enterprise bridge crew would discuss it as filler until plot comes up. Pike tells the crew this new hull material may be refitted into the whole fleet, Ortegas would comment on how terribly bulky it looks, Spock would logically say the new hull are sturdier and the pylons are more durable.
That's not a bad idea. I feel like Una would be more likely to talk up refitting the fleet though, whereas Pike just wants to know if the bulkier hull plating means less space for his kitchen.
And I hope to see actual Conie instead Sombra class Enterprise. Maybe Kirk steal it form Mothball? Or CBS make again things more convoluted then they should.
Woo hoo with sensor arrays like that I am sure it did a lot of sitting on the DMZ and looking at the Klingons and Romulans. I am sure Section 13 had these babies in use too.
The reason for the older nacelles is probably because they are the actual nacelles from the Constitutions, when theirs were upgraded. It would be faster to just install new engines on the Constitutions, rather than upgrade the ones they had. This would mean that Starfleet had extra nacelles sitting around.
I know the ship destroyed in a temporal war incident is meant to be the player ship for the tos temporal agent - hell i played the tos temporal agent playthrough. And yet when Ric mentions it here, there is no doubt in my mind that the ship being refferenced "canonically" is the Armager.
I like the idea that Starfleet just DIDN'T have much ship variety in the TOS years. As if some influential Starfleet dude just pushed for a fleet of all-pupose ships and that happened to be when TOS happened. I'd rather have canon explain why TOS ships looked the way they did than have them just overwrite canon (like SNW is somewhat doing). I know we're never going to have the TOS era be untouched and inviolate forever, but I would like them to tread lightly around that time period. SNW is a good show but I wish they weren't so willing to change the look and the tech level of the TOS years.
U said this ship was built after the standard constitution classes. But why does the registry # Armiger 1504 and Enterprise 1701. I thought the #’s were a succession of construction.
i don't know. I guess it's ok, but I just can't really like this design. Maybe it's the stubby secondary hull. My personal favorite is the Bonaventure Class (sometimes called the North Carolina Class) where the secondary hull was fitted down the center of the saucer section. I know some people don't like that design.
That's my question. I kind of assumed that it was actually a byproduct of the Constitution development project that was launched before the Connie itself in part to stress test new technologies.
So basically this thing is a later "remix" of the NX refit? Certainly looks and sounds like someone basically thought Starfleet gave up on the NX far too early. I would agree, incidentally.
The thing I never understood was how the Pioneer was basically the Miranda class as the tutorial ship which make me wonder why they didn’t just use the TOS Miranda
The lore doesn't sit well with me. From the registry numbers and overall design the Pioneer Class feels like an immediate predecessor to the Constitution Class. It looks it could go between the USS Bonaventure design and the Constitution. The only thing that gives away it as coming after are the torpedo launchers between the saucer and engineering hulls. Having it as a significant intermediate design from the early 23rd century makes more sense for it to be highlighted in the fleet museum. In any case, I'm always glad to get more ships in canon!
Agreed, that was the thing that kept confusing me, that the registry as we have been told puts it before the Constitution Class where the discrepancy regarding its older warp drive would make sense.
So if the Constitution class gets new nacelles about the time the Pioneers are being built, and the Pioneers use those older style nacelles, could they just be those older nacelles being reused? And surviving Pioneers get the hand-me-down when the Constitutions and Mirandas get upgraded. Doesn't have to be just as good, just good enough.
Agreed! That's the thing that sorta melts my brain about the Trek IP holders - yes there are some AAA tier ship designs, but a lot of it is ok or absolute hot space garbage. They own *all* the stuff from FASA and STO...why not USE IT, and USE it WELL?
Of the four STO factions, only the Federation has two time periods you can start in. Here are the starting ships, 23rd cent. Federation = Pioneer class, 25th cent. Federation = Miranda class, Klingon = B'Rell bird of prey, Romulan = T'Liss bird of prey, Dominion = Jem'Hadar attack ship.
Until they change something, this class date back to early 23'th century, predating Constitution class. It is most likely fallow up to Baton Rouge class, what itself was fallow up to Ceres class from time of Romulan War (it is the same ship what appear in TAS, known as Old Bonaventure. What we may deduce from fact that Archer was using names of missing ships for new classes and Bonaventure class was direct fallow up to NX and later was used as base for Kelvin Era design, with exception of Einstein and Newton class based on Yorktown class hulls). It is why detailing is different then on standard TOS Era hulls, as it is smaller and older ship.
In a world of what amounts to basically unlimited resources, ships either would be slow, medium, fast, or fill some extremely specialized roll. Why would you make a ship that was slower, smaller, and less well armed?
In a post scarcity society, with as close to unlimited resources as you can get, does it make any sense to design ships with older technology or weaker systems than your absolute best? The Federations only real limited resource was it's officers, yet getting assigned to a Miranda class or Oberth class is almost a death sentence.
While people of Earth live in post scarcity, Federation actually did do old dirty capitalist trade of resources. In one of episodes Picard participate in trade negotiations and after clearing this misunderstanding, Ferengi open trade relations with Earth. With Quarks becoming major corporation. But the reason was political. Thing is that rapid development of Federation confused Klingons. Who legitimately believed that Federation conquered Vulcans. With who previously they develop harsh respect. And then new weird ships start coming one after another, making them unsure with who they deal. For that reason Starfleet start using standardized visual style (TMP era). But in reality those ships were extremely modular and beside shell, those were not the same ships (for reminder, from Phase 2 upward. Starfleet ships were a drone hives). But this solution was introduced only from USS Jefferies designed around 2270's, while older conventionally designed TOS style ships, were not upgradable and only museum units stay in service. With exception of already heavily refitted Daedalus class. But over time (late 24'th century) even this design become reaching its limits. Mostly due to fact that new design architecture take way more space. After Klingons formed alliance with Federation. After famous incident involving Ambasador. It included introduction to Federation registry system and by extend Starfleet, after Lost Era of development start again developing new ships. What lead to rapid change in scale during TNG (the 90's shows), making full use from potential of modular design and scale. From 25'th century, Federation gain ability to basically print ships in all shapes and sizes, as they please. That include option of creating chimera ships. In category of smaller hulls. What was fallow up to project where they reanimated lot of dead (as result of Dominion War) or unfinished ships, by mashing them together. With clever system of connectors. And I'm not talking just about STO. USS Yeager is best known example.
The secondary hull looks useless other than the deflector dish. Seems like a test vessel. I.e. test vertical warp core v.s. horizontal. Switch between them if the test fails, kind of thing. I like it in Canon cuz it fits, but needs a good reason. It's a design looking for a need, not a need looking for a design type of thing.. if that makes sense...
Is Picard really Prime Timeline? I’d argue that it’s part of an alternate timeline that includes ENT, DSC, and SNW. The event beginning that branch would be the events of ST First Contact.
Yup, the TNG movies, ENT and pre-Narada attack JJ Trek are an alternate timeline. A recent SNW ep confirmed Kurtzman Trek is a delayed Eugenics War alternate timeline. At this rate, I'm pretty sure the Romulan star didn't explode in the Prime timeline.
So nasa is using the old space shuttle tanks and solid boosters for the SLS. I wonder if Star Fleet made the pioneer class, by using the old nacelles from refit constitutions.
there two type of the pioneer class the utility version and the frigate version i played the tos faction i wish there was more eps in the 23rd centruy then the ones we get in the sto