TMP era fanon carriers - Star Trek starship parts kit expansion

[This kit can also be found on my Google Drive mirror. ]

Note: I’ve created a Patreon to support my modelling projects. If you’ve found my work useful, have the means, and would like to support my efforts, please give it a look. I will continue to release my designs for free on Cults 3D and Thingiverse, but Patreon members will get early access and in progress updates on my new projects, and it will serve as a central location for announcements. Thanks for reading!

This is a follow-up on my last kit, which covered TOS era Federation carriers. In this kit we move forward a few decades to The Motion Picture era.

As noted in the previous kit, there’s zero on-screen canonical evidence of fighters or carriers pre-Dominion war (aside from the quasi-canonical Star Fleet Battles designs, which I do not cover). In this kit, I’ve pulled from Fanon designs found at the web site shipschematics.net, as well as ships of my own devising.

The contents of this kit are provided into four zip files:

• fed-carriers-TMP-ship-stls.zip – Print-ready combined ship STL files.
• fed-carriers-TMP-blender-parts-files.zip – Blender files with parts files pre-arranged as they are on the output ship stl files.
• fed-carriers-TMP-blender-source-files.zip – The Blender source files used to generate the part STL files.
• fed-carriers-TMP-parts-stls.zip – Individual STL part files for digital kitbashing.

This kit supports the following variant ship classes:

Ark Royal class fleet carrier (AKA Ranger)

This design was first seen in the game Starfleet Command II - Empires at War, released by Taldren/Interplay in the year 2000. Originally known as the Ranger class, the design has recently been seen again in Star Trek Online, where it’s known as the Ark Royal class (Ark Royal being the default ship name in the original game). My version attempts to match the original game art where possible, differing most noticeably from what you’ll see in STO with a slightly hexagonal lower hull. Note this ship is much larger than the other ships in this kit, rivaling the Ambassador and even approaching the Galaxy class in size.

Ariel class shuttle carrier

Taking some design cues from the (in)famous Ralph McQuarrie redesign of the Enterprise for the canceled Planet of The Titans movie project but using the more familiar refit Constitution style components, the Ariel originates from the fan work “Heavy Cruiser Evolution Blueprints” by David Nielsen and Aridas Sofia. I’ve also a three-nacelle version of this ship in the kit. Ariel is another very large ship.

Coronado class thru-deck carrier (Forrestal subtype)

The originally TOS version by the team at Starstation Aurora. This TMP style model is inspired by the refit Forrestal subtype designed by Anthony "Kelvin0514" Auverdin.

Dakota class heavy shuttle carrier

Design by Eric Kristiansen (Jackill). A stretched double Miranda hull, with many, many shuttle bays. In addition to the three nacelle version based on source art, I’ve added added a 4-nacelle version I’m calling the MK-2

Drake class thru-deck carrier

TOS version by David Tiekamp. TMP refit is my own interpretation.

Franz Joseph Federation class dreadnought

My interpretation of a thru-deck carrier conversion of the Federation class.

Long Island class carrier

As with the TOS version, the refit Long Island is based on the original art of Neal “Vance” Davidson / Federation Frontiers

Minas Gerais class light carrier

My own design, the Minas Gerais uses a double rear-hull inspired by the Dakota, but not stretched, resulting in a standard Miranda class length.

Oriskany class thru-deck carrier

Design by Eric Kristiansen (Jackill).

Notes on scaling and working with Blender

My target scale for all source files and output STL files is 1:1000. Although these files have not been extensively tested through printing, they are intended to be resized to match common modelling and miniatures scales.

Blender is free, which to be honest was the primary factor in my decision to learn it. There are many fine video and text tutorials available online if you're interested in learning more. See the Blender fundamentals tutorials playlist to get started.

You can use File -> Import -> Stl (.stl) and File -> Export -> Stl (.stl) to load or save STL files in blender.

Note: These kits were built using Blender 2.9.

Post-processing STL output

Although all of the STL files included have been tested as valid watertight meshes, joining the parts together and exporting new STL files can introduce small errors that may cause issues with slicing programs. I recommend any STL files you create are checked using a program like Netfabb Basic free edition. Doing a simple "Close All Holes" repair has fixed most of the issues I've run into so far. If you do run into issues with mesh quality, please let me know.

Parts list

The following lists provide a summary of the included parts. Parts are included in the ZIP file fed-carriers-TOS-parts-stls.zip.

For the majority of items, the mesh origin has been set so that when you import these objects into your 3D editor of choice, they are positioned as they would be on the sample ships provided.

Parts

Combined ship STLs

All combined, ready-to-print ship files are included in fed-carriers-TMP-ship-stls.zip. These files provide sample ships generated using the parts included in this kit.

Blender files

There are two zip files included that supple blender files:

• fed-carriers-TMP-blender-parts-files.zip contains a parts file for each ship, containing the STL parts arranged as used in the sample ship designs
• fed-carriers-TMP-blender-parts-files.zip contains containing the original raw blender objects used to create the parts files.

License

I'm releasing this under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license. You're free to distribute and modify these files (even for commercial use), provided you attribute the creator and distribute your contributions under the same license.