Cargo Scenario

A little more detail on the gangway, and I finally hooked the ship up to see how it looks.

Nothing too close-up yet, but a port view shows the addition of “shore power connections” to the gangway unit,  based upon a gem I was recently excited to see on the Drex Files; some nice concept sketches that Andrew Probert produced for TMP’s drydock scenes.

When I added those extended panels on the ventral hull of the McCook, my essential reason was to give the appearance she was in typical drydock maintenance mode.  Another reason however was because I was under the mistaken impression that the Akyazi ships didn’t have much in the way of cargo storage even though I noted they had “matter stores” on deck 4. And while they don’t have any dedicated cargo bays per se (like some of the larger interiors I’ve worked on), it appears upon further examination of the Akula deck plans that there is a narrow area of cargo stowage on deck 5 around the entire outer edge of the primary hull. There are 17 individual storage areas all accessible from within the connecting concentric corridor. This is on both the port and starboard sides of the ship for a total of 34. I’m not sure how I totally missed this for so long.

Heck, I was just going to create 2 small dedicated bays with easy external access on either side of the ships bow for a mere few cargo pods. But now that I look at it, this might be the perfect staging area for incoming cargo that might follow some sort of conveyor system around the edge of the ships hull. They would be delivered to this extended panel where it could promptly close up.  Each one could be shoved all the way around the outer bend of the saucer and there could be one pod (or maybe two- contingent on deck height) per storage area. To avoid difficulty with empty pods and wasted space, when a pod is rendered bare and a restocking is necessary, maybe those Starfleet standard cargo pods are easily collapsible. It could be quickly broken down and taken out by way of the corridor and pods in line could be filed on down to take the empty space.

Currently I have nothing modeled other than the ship’s panels and their extender arms. The panels will need some sort of floor markings for their designation as… well, floors, and airlock areas. I will also probably need to refine the extender arms.

~ by starstation on June 1, 2009.