My friends and I recently challenged each other to list our top five starship classes and were surprised by how different our opinions were despite being generally in agreement with what we like about the various series.
Personally it was hard for me to make a definitive "top five" but here are some I rank highly in no particular order:
- TOS-era constitution
- Refit constitution
- Discovery-era Bird of Prey (OG is good too obv but I love the HR Geiger-esque weirdness)
- D'Kora class Ferengi ship
Not canon, butI love the original "Long-boi" Discovery design. It gives off some very cool art-deco retro-futurism vibes. Not very classically "trek" but I love it nonetheless!
I am curious to see what c/StarTrek thinks!
5 Olympic-class
4 Parliament-class
3 Centaur-class
2 D'Deridex-class Romulan Warbird
1 TOS Romulan Bird-of-Prey (the updated version seen in PIC and SNW is also great)
I also want to give an honourable mention to the Niagara-class, which is a three nacelle abomination. When I started running my Star Trek Adventures game, I choose the Niagara-class because I wanted something relatively unique which still that communicated to the players they weren't in a top of the line, prestigious ship. It's been just over two years since we started playing the adventures of the USS Dauntless (yes, I know, but it's not that Dauntless), and the ship has really grown on me.
On my best days I can tolerate the presence of a one nacelle ship, maybe even a four nacelle ship. But I'll be dead in the cold cold ground before I recognize the legitimacy of a THREE nacelle ship.
I’m sorry, but it sounds to me as though you’re saying a one nacelle ship is more tolerable than a four nacelle ship, and I just can’t take anything seriously after that.
At least with four nacelles you can understand how they’re generating the warp field between them, but one? Does it have two sets of warp coils inside the single nacelle? All Starships are beautiful in Gene’s eyes, but I believe there are some he chooses not to look upon.
You're absolutely right. I can tolerate four nacelle ships as long as they keep it in the bedroom. Single nacelle ships belong in jail.