"Klingon L13 'Fatman' class Battleship" Topic

I've created a monster!

Here it is – my digital model of the L13 Battleship, known unkindly amongst Starfleet personnel as 'the Fat Man'.

I think I've done a reasonable job of adding some toned muscle to the otherwise Sumo wrestler-like exterior of this lumbering giant. The overall dimensions are pretty close to those of the FASA original, but I've scooped out some interior volume to make her a bit more trim.

As you can see from this comparison to the D10 Heavy Cruiser, the L13 is not some Super Star Destroyer proportioned leviathan. She's about the same length (302 metres; 96.6mm in 1/3125 scale) but certainly taller!

With a bit of luck, this will also be available in both 1/3125 and 1/3788 scales from Studio Bergstrom in the near future. I can't comment on timelines or prices yet, those are entirely within the realm of the hard-working 'Drew at SB.

We will be sure to pass on information as soon as we are able. Apologies for not having all the facts yet, but, I just finished the sculpt, and was eager to show off my big, ugly baby. :)

For those coming in late, the L13 is a design that originates with the FASA Star Trek RPG and boardgame. The subject of much derision, the L13 has the guns, troops and shields of a battleship – but no power to run everything. If one sticks to the FASA backstory, then the L13 is a bit of a battlefield liability.

But if you hypothesise that the Klingons eventually put in a decent reactor, the L13 could be a winning design. (Although not in a starship beauty contest.)

Alternatively, all that interior space leads to opportunities to speculate… conversion to a planetary assault ship, with room for a full heavy armour battalion? Or maybe the Klingon's first dedicated fleet carrier…

I originally made this as a personal challenge. Purely a case of 'can I build one of these?' Now the question is – what do YOU think? Would you want one in your Klingon fleet? What role could it serve?

Let the speculations begin!

- Martin

You did a good job with one of the fugliest ships in the FASA Trek line.

I would expect it as a massive troop transport or carrier of some kind, unless it is meant for other cargo transport. Big and ugly, but should have a niche in any fleet.

Yeah, everyone seemed to hate the original Fatman but I like this one!

With all that room for extra consumables, I can actually see it as a long-range raider – or perhaps a 'milk-cow' for smaller raiders (code name: Little Boys).

Spudeus – your idea is officially too good for me to not use it. There's a whole campaign of scenarios right there!!!

I think it was maybe my posted dislike of this ship that spurred you to do a redesign, and I am thoroughly glad you did. That is fantastic. I can now get rid of the abomination of a model that I have happily knowing a perfect replacement will be available soon(ish).

When will we see the "Little Boys"? The standard you've set I would expect you to have them done by yesterday. ;)

Colin

Great, thx! I suppose it depends on what flavor of Trek you prefer – the later ships seem to zip around with impunity but in TOS & SFB there definitely seems to be a logistical tether.

As I said in the other thread, I like what you've done! Agree that the hull could easily be re-purposed as a carrier or assault ship.

Also LOVE the 'raider tender' concept!

-Will

Is the D10 also going to be released ?

Great looking render!

I kind of like the idea that these were turkeys. I can see these ships as a prestige posting for aging Klingon warriors that are too old to serve in frontline ships, but have too distinguished careers to cashier, and have not had the good taste to die in battle yet. Post them to this ship, send them out on milk runs, and hope they run into some Romulans so they can die gloriously in battle, and secure their place in Sto'vo'kor…

Damon.

Man, that is one UGLY ship. Not your fault, though, so I will happily howl derision at FASA. Klingon ships are supposed to be lean and graceful, like a saber or katana; not fat and bricklike, like a basket-hilt claymore.

With all the internal space, I'd definitely assume that they got converted into carriers or troop transports, though Spudeus' milch-cow idea is another good one. Long-range raider isn't bad, either, assuming that it got refitted with a powerplant capable of feeding all the weapons (or at least feeding all the phasers and about half the heavy weapons).

Nice work MM, it seems even, err, sleeker than the original!

I'm another for the "raider tender" role, a fine idea. But perhaps it could have an inbuilt opera-house, for added dramatic effect ;)

Cheers, RC.

I don't think it is ugly at all. It seems to me that it wpuld make an excellent freighter or supply ship.

Once again I suggest people check out USS Long Beach.

New tech is not always pretty, or terribly successful.

Although this does remind me of one scene in Spaceballs:

"Shut all hatches, close all the shops in the mall, and cancel the three-ring circus!"

I love the FASA ships and will certainly pick up some of each. That said, I'd also love to get miniatures based on the Starfleet Command computer game. I particularly like the Yamato Battleship and most of the Romulan ships.

link

link

I will not repeat the actual history behind the ship that explains its ugliness.

Your conversion of it is nice. I would have kept the size closer to the original (it wasn't that huge) but this is a good compromise.

The added details to the hull are good, though the engines do seem to be fusing with the hull in an odd fashion (perhaps just needs a panel line). The bridge design seems like a nice command module for fleet operations.

Thanks everyone for the comments. It seems that ugly is 'in' with the starship gaming crowd! :D

Glad there's so much positive response to Spudeus' idea of the L13 being repurposed into a Milch Cow. Now for the raiders… (I'm not THAT fast, Colin!) a TOS era Bird of Prey seems the most logical choice… What do we think?

Patrick R – Yes! The thread for the D10 can be found here:

TMP link

and here's the thread announcing the arrangement with 'Drew at Studio Bergstrom:

TMP link

Damon – THAT is a great idea for a scenario…

Gear Pilot – thanks for the links, although I am really concentrating on reviving the FASA designs before looking at other interpretations of the franchise. Still, you never know. :)

Eli – the fusing is a bit of a cheat; I'm a bit worried that area will be tricky casting-wise, so the engine is just pushed into the support structure, rather than being correctly mounted.

You'll notice there is NO detail at all between the hull and the 'wings', partly to make mould release easier, and partly because I don't think anyone will thank me for adding details to be painted in such a tight area! :D

Coming up next: The Federation's Arrow class Fast Response Ship!

- Martin

How about prison ship?

Scenario requiring it to be boarded and prisoners removed for victory points?

tl;dr: The revised design hides how absurdly small the warp nacelles are, compared to the bulk of the hull. The wing design (blame the FASA original) is also illogical in the context of TOS and for basic, well, everything.

I have no problem with functionality making ships ugly. I very much like "realistic" clasgs histories, poorly thought-out design concepts, noble failures, stupid failures, etc., etc.*

The L-13 design is just a big fail in the TOS context. First off, I'm a believer that the warp engines need to "see" each other. You've done that, so no problem. However, we also see that all of the warships in TOS have their warp nacelles mounted away from their hulls. Keeping radiation away from the crews or something? Anyhow, that's the point of the Enterprise's pylons, the Romulan hull extensions, and why the Klingon ships curve out in their bat-wings.

The design of the L-13 is a big logical fail in many ways. Why start the wings way up at the top of the fuselage, barely angle them away from the hull at all, and then terminate them right by the lower corner of the hull? Any naval architect, or line officer, would look at the design and say, "That's just stupid!" You could simply have stubby wings sticking down from the bottom of the fuselage. If you need distance for radiation safety, this is just a fail. "But maybe the lower portion of the hull is engineering machinery, so they don't need distance!" Great. Why have those bizarre wings? And what are they putting in those massive wings that doesn't need to be protected from radiation.

Keep in mind, warp nacelles are established technology. It's not like Klingon naval architects don't know the basic requirements for placing them! And those naval architects are certainly capable of producing some very good designs.

I'd love to see a design that's just ugly and misproportioned, but maintains some logic. Perhaps adding the bulk of the wings to the hull, to keep it really fat, then adding bat wing that take the full width of the hull, curve down bit while necking down really fast, and have a leading edge that sweeps back rapidly to the little warp nacelles. That way, you really show off how absurdly tiny the warp nacelles are compared to the bulk of the ship. The redesign still mostly hides the warp nacelles by burying them in/behind the wings, making them seem much more massive than they really are.

(For a simpler mod, keep the wings more or less as they are, but then have additional wind stubs off of _those_ that hold the warp nacelles. For something really, really simple, just cut back bits of the bottom of the existing wing.

* However, you don't ususally get truly stupid designs except when designers are pushing the limits--or when they're trying to incorporate new technologies and simply don't have experience. A great example is the F-102 Delta Dagger, which turned out to be subsonic when the prototype was flown! The fuselage required a major redesign, which allowed the production interceptors to reach a not-too-impressive Mach 1.25. The associated Falcon missile is another example: when it was tested in a shoot-off against the prototype Sidewinder, the Sidewinder's simplicity made it much more effective and its durability was ridiculous. The Falcon had to be kept in a climate-controlled environment with extensive electronic monitoring systems; the Sidewinders were set on a trailer, covered with a tarp, left outside overnight, and loaded on the aircraft with no checkups …

Maybe the Klingons wanted to get rid of vulnerable wings by tucking the engines into the main structure (like the Defiant would do 100 years later).

To compensate, they probably added (literally) tons of shielding.

Which might explain why the L13 suffered performance issues.

Sorry to disagree, but putting wings on it just turns it into another 'big D-7', which is fine but we already have many of them out there.

It is also pretty well established that Klingons operate ate radiation levels that are considered dangerous to humanity. Also, depending what canon you follow, they have slave races operating the engine rooms.

-Eli

I agree with Ghostrunner- Nacelles too close to the hull? Add more shielding to protect to the crew from the time-space warping voodoo. Say the nacelle placement was an experiment to better protect the nacelles, it required lots of extra shielding, the performance impact was bad, the Klingons didn't try it again.

When trek-nology is 100% handwavium justifying things just take a little thought.

-Will

Ghostrunner: They didn't eliminate the wings. Or do you mean that they put armor in front of the warp nacelle an partially covering the side?

No one has offered an explanation of why putting the nacelles on the end of very short wings or broad pylons wouldn't be vastly more effective. Why have that gap between the wing and hull at all if it's not needed?

If the Klingons tolerate more radiation/have slave races/whatever, what's the reason for the wings on all of those TOS Klingon designs?

I'll stand by my main assertion: exposing the warp nacelles does a much more effective job of making the ship look ridiculous--hull too big, engines too small.

Martin: my apologies for being so late writing this. I've been doing days of, "Oh, I'll get to that …"

Ok… let's go FULL HANDWAVIUM…

- Eliminate the cantilvered wings, to reduce vulnerability. Put them INSIDE the main armor belt!

- NEW NACELLES ARE EXPENSIVE. Sorry… got to stick with D-7 nacelles, but you can make them a bit bigger if you like.

- BUT, that tends to fry the crew… Oh, well we're KLINGONS (and we'll add a bunch of shielding inboard around the crew spaces to keep the crew alive at least until they finish a mission).

- ALSO, our warp coils are pretty low lifespan and require replacement about 10x more often the Starfleet. So… provide access for nacelle removal that doesn't require disassembling the entire side of the ship.

- HUH… ship is looking pretty ridiculous. We shall name it FAT MAN.

Ghostrunner: They didn't eliminate the wings. Or do you mean that they put armor in front of the warp nacelle an partially covering the side?

No – armor between nacelles and crew areas.

No one has offered an explanation of why putting the nacelles on the end of very short wings or broad pylons wouldn't be vastly more effective. Why have that gap between the wing and hull at all if it's not needed?

Put them on pylons, and they are vulnerable. With MM's design changes, at least the nacelles can 'see' each other. Also makes it possible to swap them out periodically – engine access is a HUGE deal for modern aircraft, and ships for that matter.

If the Klingons tolerate more radiation/have slave races/whatever, what's the reason for the wings on all of those TOS Klingon designs?

Shielding = weight. There's also a difference between long term effects and frying the engineering crew in the amount of time it takes to reach Warp One.

I'll stand by my main assertion: exposing the warp nacelles does a much more effective job of making the ship look ridiculous--hull too big, engines too small.

I think maybe I misunderstood before – you are saying adding small wings would make it look even more silly?

I can see the appeal in that.

Maybe (after a few Klingon engineers were 'retired'), they tried to improve performance with FAT MAN Mk II. Guess we should ask Martin is he's up for a second version.

Ultimately any of this looks the way it does because an artist drew it and an art director approved it.

All the technical stuff is usually PSB tacked on after the fact when fans come poking around or story asks a question.

In simplest terms. The big bulky stub wings could be a way to maintain separation between hull and nacelle while also making that very weak point less so.

Try not to over think too much of it. Even the sacred "Rodenberry Rules" were created after the fact.

-Eli

The other Klingon battleship out there isn't much better, being nothing more than a bloated D-7 with nacelles glued to its underbelly and a toppled cake of command towers.

-Eli

Well, I leave the dockyard for just a minute, and see what happens…?? ;)

If the L13 does only one thing well, it is stir up controversy among starship enthusiasts. It is a curious fact that the design has so many fans, and yet is undeniably one of the most flawed creatures in the FASA bestiary.

One does indeed need to engage 'full handwavium mode' to explain some of its peculiarities, but then again, find me a canon vessel that doesn't need a sprinkle of disbelief-suspending dust.

By way of example: One of the worst offenders is also one of the most popular ships in Trek history – The Klingon Bird of Prey. Where are the warp engines? Is there a navigational deflector? Then where is it? Why does it keep being upscaled, with absolutely no visible changes?

But these discrepancies do no detract from the Bird of Prey's popularity. Why? Because it looks so damn right for the role.

In the same way we ignore the stupidity of a caped crime-fighter who doesn't get that cape caught each time he closes his car door, we overlook the design questions of the BoP because it has just the right look for its character – the sinister, swift, alien predator, swooping out of nowhere, to mercilessly gun down its prey.

The L13's appeal might be due to the fact it too is perfectly cast. It is the poster child for the "This is Not How to Design a Starship" campaign. It was created almost as a joke; as FASA's proof that the Klingons, for all their martial prowess, are as flawed and foolish as humans.

The challenge I set myself was not to redeem the L13. Nor was it to create a thigh-slapping guffaw of a ship. I wanted to see what happens when some principles of design that I'd applied to other FASA vessels were extended to a ship which, in its original form, lumbers in the face of those principles.

Let's consider though, some possible proofs that the L13 is not as illogical as it appears.

On the question of those slab-like 'wings' – There is a sound logic to the placement and surfacing of these. I did consider extending the nacelles on stubby pylons from the sides of the main hull, but to do so would in fact ADD to the already burdensome mass of the ship.

A flat surface, with few or no angles or faces, must mass less than one that (in this case) would cover the side of the main hull, AND the pylon. If we assume such a pylon takes the same amount of armour as the hull, it will noticeably increase the total mass. Not something you'd want on a ship in dire need of a treadmill already!

Then there's this as a possible explanation for the positioning of the nacelles (Handwavium goggles at the ready, folks,):

Here's another fine image from Brad Torgersen's site, (my go-to for FASA stuff)…

Ignoring the much-later L24 class BB, notice the nacelle spacing on the D7 and the L13? Almost identical, right?

What if that distance is the farthest that Klingon nacelles of that era could be placed apart, and still generate a stable warp field?

If that is the case, then the true Achilles' heel of Klingon starship technology is revealed. And the vertical dimensions of the L13 are explained – it can't be wider, so the only way is up!

No doubt if the Klingons had Andorians on the design team for the L13, they'd have put the nacelles inside, and built the ship around them (as in the Thufir and Andor classes) but no self-respecting Klingon architect was ever going to admit the Federation actually had a good idea…

On top of this, we can indulge in a little thought exercise about the political rationale for the L13. Who benefited from patronising this design? Was it built in economically depressed regions of the Empire, as a jobs programme? Was the designer's original clear, shining vision compromised by multiple committees and self-interest lobby groups?

And given that this is an empire, what levels of ego, pride and corruption undermined the creation of a viable battleship, resulting in an underpowered, oversized cruiser?

Perhaps all these questions explain the real appeal of the L13. This isn't some vanilla fanship. The L13 sparks controversy and debate, making it more memorable than a design that we can all agree on.

Mind you, I still think mine will be re-tasked as 'Milch Cows'!

- Martin

An amazing piece of thought on the design.

The L13 has always been a testament, in my mind, to the continuing idea that Klingons were originally supposed to represent the Soviet Union, a design concept that continued up until Star Trek 6.

This means vessels created in a restrictive, often brutal political climate where results and the need for experimentation are often at bitter odds. One can see misunderstood, often undervalued Klingon scientists and technicians being lorded over by strutting (or lumbering) old generals or rash young commanders, all with their own agendas that invariably trod all over the design process.

The end result are vessel like the L13 or the D11 "One Wing"

-Eli

Hey, don't be hating on the B10; it is built under a different set of technology assumptions but it's not an illogical extension of the way SFB assumed ship design worked.

For Klingon Battleships there's also this 3-nacelle job, which I think overall might be my favorite:
link

Overall I think MacrossMartin did a GREAT job of breaking down the reasons why the L-13 might look like it does. I love this sort of design process, and I appreciate seeing it in action.

-Will

some old models i did.

Of which I have many :)

-Eli

Hey, don't be hating on the B10; it is built under a different set of technology assumptions but it's not an illogical extension of the way SFB assumed ship design worked.

Part of which included an assumption about the maximum output of a warp nacelle. It's why SFB dreadnoughts have 3 nacelles and their BB designs have 4.

Part of which included an assumption about the maximum output of a warp nacelle. It's why SFB dreadnoughts have 3 nacelles and their BB designs have 4.

Yes, and the idea that nacelles provided power rather than consumed it. So more nacelles = more power!

-Will

I won't blame the Soviets for the D-13; I always assumed a German influence…

Doug

Doug is right, I suspect. I always thought that was the real-world inspiration for the D11.

Often wondered; what if the D11 had a 'broadside' of disruptor banks on the starboard side? Their arc of fire would be unlimited through a full hemisphere…

(No, I'm not sculpting this one!!!)

- Martin

Disruptors or special sensors for the scouting/fleet EW mission.

Often wondered; what if the D11 had a 'broadside' of disruptor banks on the starboard side?

I would have wanted a mirror image version to complement.

In a meeting engagement, have them cross just ahead of the main fleet to unload heck, and try to flee before too damaged, to disrupt the enemy's lead units before contact.

Seemed like a one-trick pony, granted, but one I wanted to try out. Timing would be a mutha.

Doug

Fleet Book 2 for Attack Vector: Tactical includes a broadside ship. In a vector movement game, it makes more sense. Well, mostly.

Yeah, I had some sketched out in Full Thrust, played without 'roll'.

Obviously, near worthless mano-a-mano against a maneuverable ship. I thought a few possibly useful when I was thinking of some fleet units for ablative duck-and-run.

Doug

Some years ago I picked up a resin & metal one from some British company (That I now can not recall the name of.) I was amazed when I opened the box and saw the size of it.

One advantage of digital sculpting is that making a mirror image of a sculpt is literally about two stylus-clicks and three keystrokes of work.

BUT—! It's exactly the same amount of printing, master preparation, mould making and casting… so, the saving isn't really that great.

But I do wonder how a force of right-winged and left-winged D-11's might perform, assuming they were re-armed as 'broadside' cruisers. Might have to playtest that!

Green Beanie – was it the overall dimensions or the volume that amazed you?

The volume. Future Legends was the company.