The Precise Defiant

[Saquist]

As long as I've had Bridge Commander and played it's Epic Battles I've always wondered what it would be like to fly the Powerful Defiant or the Smart and Fast Voyager through the missions.
Thanks to 9 0f 9 we got that opportunity.  Later Lint created another more detailed and smoother model that is currently the norm.  Unfortunantly Defiant doesn't have a set of proper schematics and so the reproductions of Defiant have some wild varriations.

I will be making a Precise Schematic of the  Defiant and  an analaysis of David Schmidts Defiant, 9 of 9's Defiant and Lints Defiant in an attempt to find the truth of it's true dimensions.

So I took the best Plan View of the Defiant out of Canon.
and made a simple line drawing and mirrored the results to the shadow side




This is David Schmidt's Defiant from Strategic Designs.
I recreated this design in a line drawing to over lay.





I then overlayed the two and got this result.
The bold blue represents the actual Defiant from paradise Lost.
The Green & White represents the David Schmidts Defiant
It's an almost perfect match. (there are detail problems which I will illistrate later.)

-The "shoulders" just behind the nose is very, very close.
-the nacelles are slightly off but the outter angles are nearly a match .
-The tail section are also nearly a perfect match. (the sections in the tail are at the right anle AND the right size.)





Next we'll compare to the 9 of 9 Defiant.

[deadthunder2_0]

You know there was a difference between the Defiant physical model and the CGI model in the series right?

[Saquist]

You know there was a difference between the Defiant physical model and the CGI model in the series right?

Yeah,  I won't be entertaining any of the CGI knock offs except the ILM Defiant which is a pretty faithful reproduction.

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Since David Schmidt's Defiant gets so close in the overall shape I decided to use his schematic as an overlay LINT's Defiant. (RED)




-From the overlay we can see that the Nacelles fall short.
-The angle of the Nacelles are also just a smudge off at the sides.
-There is also a difference in width for the aft sections and their angles.  LINT defines the first aft segment from the ship's mid section as a parallel extension.
-LINT seems to get the shoulders curve at the front of the ship almost precisely.
-The Nose is too thin from the plan view.




-Too my surprise 9 of 9's Defiant also gets the Nose wrong in width.
-The shoulders (like LINTS DEFIANT) are almost perfect.
-The nacelles though are too far forward, to thin and at the incorrect angle and length
-The aft segmented sections are nearly a match for the actual Defiant.  Deck  1's aft section is a perfect match.  But the taper to the bridge area is all wrong.

[Bones]

Schmidt's schematic seems to have the nose a bit too thick

[Saquist]

Schmidt's schematic seems to have the nose a bit too thick

That's my mistake.
When I first started the project a couple of months ago I believed that 9 of 9's Defiant had a better nose section than LINT'S.  I couldn't have been more wrong.  So this entire project started with the nose. I thought that all that was needed for LINT'S design was a NOSE JOB.   I pulled every picture I could of the actual Defiant's nose and started a trace analysis of the features and contours.  The blue nose in the first post is a cut paste on to the Lakota / Defiant trace drawing.



These are the original drawings above.
I believed that these traces of the actual model nose would fit the Lakota/Defiant trace.  I was wrong.  The model photos are likely elongated because of close perspective and actually appear thinner after the trace.  I ended up finding more quirks in the Defiant model than just the nose and I realized I had to find a reliable ortho of the ship with perpendicular lines in or find out if the original nose were right or wrong.  I ended up leaving the cut and paste on the proper tracing with hopes of resolving the nose issue later.





So from left to right.
First is the trace drawing (nose corrected)
Second is the pulled trace drawing with the (corrected nose)
Third is the nose that was cut and pasted from the original nose drawings (which may or not be wrong, we'll find out)




The above is the literal trace of the nose and body from the Lakota/Defiant image (bold blue) compared with David Schmidt's Defiant (Green & White)
I have two of these images in drawing.  One trace is scaled from the tip of the nose to the tip of the rear, (Like you'd expect) and the other is scaled according to the detail (which it matches perfectly such as the sensors and torp housing)  The catch is this scaling (not shown as Defiant's aft section measuring up a bit short.  This means the nose might be the issue in the David Schmidt schematic as bein a bit too long.

(It's definitely a headache)
Which is why I opened the thread to get other members perspective on the issue.

[King Class Scout]

what amazes ME more than anything is how you can actually get an image sharp enough to do this with.

[Nebula]

you may be interested in this.

http://www.st-bilder.de/gallery/modelle/sternenflotte/defiant.html

[Saquist]

you may be interested in this.

http://www.st-bilder.de/gallery/modelle/sternenflotte/defiant.html

MONEY!
You just did me a HUGE favor Nebula.
This may actually solve the mystery of a sloping deck one and the mystery of the Deflector Module!
My thanks, this is a huge help.

[FarShot]

Hey Saquist, nice contribution to the community.  I was always dissatisfied with the Defiants previously released.  Now this helps explain why.

I hope someone sees this thread if they decide to build one.

[DJ Curtis]

Saquist, if out of this project you should come up with a set of good schematics for the Defiant, could I please have a copy?  With a good set I might be convinced to build this in the near'ish' future.

[FarShot]

I hope someone sees this thread if they decide to build one.

Saquist, if out of this project you should come up with a set of good schematics for the Defiant, could I please have a copy?  With a good set I might be convinced to build this in the near'ish' future.

I believe I predicted the future.  Bow to your master.

[ACES_HIGH]

IIRC, Lint, LC and 9of9 all based their Defiants off the CGI version, hence the discrepancies.  Don't fault the modders, it's the CGI model that's wrong.

[Nebula]

LC based his off the Studio Model, so did 9of9 but 9of9's was very low poly and he never had good ref pics back then.

[Bones]

Yeah I remember LC based most of his canon models off studio models instead of CGIs, I saw an article about Defiant CGI model inconsistence with studio model some time ago at Ex-Astris Scientia and it's really screwed up

[King Class Scout]

add another one to make fun of.  there's even a P81 version, which looks positivly pointy-nosed compared to most of the others.

[Saquist]

The top view is coming together by standards that I will consider canon from visuals of on screen evidence.  It should be done soon.
However the Front view is proving most difficult to lock down and if I can't establish any relative or precise heights I fear this project will end sooner than I thought.  I'd also like to get some bottom views.  The problem is I don't have the proper angles in the proper clarity on YouTUBE.  So I've been forced to by the DVD's in hopes of pulling real screen caps with at least some clarity other than a resolution of 300

Some of the Front views and bottom views I have found:
Season Three: Defiant (1)
Season Four: Way of the Warrior Part II (2)
Season Four: Shattered Mirror (2)

I'll post some of the sketches of those images soon.
But I will wait the few days it will take to get the DVD's before seriously creating a front view.

[Nebula]

ya know people want to use the MSD for the number of decks this ship has but I've always fought that... IMO it's more like 5 to 6 decks.

btw have you ever checked trekcore? They have some great screens for the Defiant from DS9, you just have to find the best eps for the Defiant and look em up there.

Also the link I provided should get ya some ideas... btw I suggest DLing them, not all the pics there will open up to their full size on the page. 

[ACES_HIGH]

also, netflix is supposedly going to start streaming episodes of all the trek series.

[Saquist]

also, netflix is supposedly going to start streaming episodes of all the trek series.

If you keep dropping helpful sites like that  I might have to give you half dibs on this project, Nebula.
Didn't know about Trek Core. I wish I new about it before I started an episode by episode search on YouTUBE. (arggh)


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I spoke with Alexander Richardson on Sci Fi Meshes and Star Trek Official Movie Forum about the 4 deck Defiant vs the 6 Deck Defiant.
-Canon says 5 Decks (per Worf)
-He pointed out the turbolift says 6 decks
-It would make sense in Starship Down if Engineering wasn't on deck one but a lower Deck if Work couldn't get to it from the Bridge.
-The MSD on the show is horribly wrong (which is why Richardson remade it) which shows a shuttle floating in the Nacelles or out side of the ship.  Same goes for the Landing Gear.

So far I'm of the opinion that the Defiant can't be 120 meters long.
Last time I did the Defiant/Galaxy/ DS9 comparisonl it was absolutely impossible to put Defiant at the Dock Ring as it looks in the series with DS9 being big enough to fit a Galaxy Class ship between it's 3 Pylons. (IMPOSSIBLE)  So Defiant has to be at least 170 Meters, a max of 200 meters.


So...I might as well make it matter of record of how ridiculous a 120 meter Defiant would be.



Okay:  So this is DS9 scaled to the 120 meter Defiant and the 642 meter Galaxy.  This image assumes that it's DS9 that is scaled wrong.
(It's actually smaller than this as Defiant's Nacelles should fit right inside the stations thrusters at either side.)






In this image DS9 is scaled up just enough to fit the Galaxy between the 3 pylons.
Defiant remains at 120 meters.
Galaxy remains at 642 meters.
The Station is at 1683 meters
We never see this sort of size comparison between Defiant and the Station.




Assuming this is the minimum a Galaxy Class ship could fit in between I used 3 different Defiants.  120, 170 and 200 meters long.

So obviously the Galaxy wasn't designed to fit between those pylons.  That was wishful thinking on the part of the FX people
Defiant was (in some ways) designed for this station.  Effect wise this ship had to be a certain size during design just like the Danube Class runabout.  The runnabout still fits on the DS9 pad at 23 meters with the station scaled up to 1.683 Km but much larger (Like 2.5 km that some shots show) and the Runabout becomes a bit of a spec on the same pad.

So essentially the minmum size of Defiant is around 170 meters
It justifies turbolifts
It justifies several effect shots Galaxy vs the Defiant, Defiant vs Mirandas
It justifies 6 decks
It justifies the shots of it dock at the station  (but requires more)
It justifies the size of the escape pods
It justifies the windows on the Defiant (which could never fit four decks.)

I think this is a case of another bad MSD
The majority of reasonable data seems to say 200 meters and 6 Decks

[ACES_HIGH]

actually if you read the article on Ex Astris Scientia (I think it was linked to earlier in this thread) he gives some pretty convincing evidence to support a 120m Defiant.  The station doesn't work very well as a scaling guide, since it was massively overscaled to fit the Galaxy class the few times we saw it there, and potentially shrunken in shots involving the Defiant.  Obviously this is because the models were never meant to be shot together and are themselves made at massively different scales.  whenever we see either of these ships docked, it's a composite shot, and the two models aren't physically connected.  If you went by something more reliable, however, such as the physical sets meant to represent the interiors, they also appear to support a smaller Defiant.

here's the link again in case you missed it:
http://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/articles/defiant-problems.htm