Lol, as interesting a notion as that is, more then likely its heavy armored plating surrounding the torpedo tubes/forward cannon array assemblies. As one can well imagine vital components in an obvious place on a starship are likely to be considered first for targeting by opponents warranting heavy armor and/or extra shielding.

I wouldn't mind seeing that design as a variant.

kirahitomi, good find. There's a lot missing from the game's Steamrunner that was made apparent in your link.

Oh wow... that is STUNNING. Yes... YES... THIS is RIGHT! Now where are the floodlights? lol jk

anyone else missing their strobe lights on their steamrunner? i was idling a bit and noticed that my Steamrunner retro did not have any of the strobes on. I had the navigational lights(red and green) but no blinkers.

You win one free internet, sir. I have not seen something that epic in an STO forum thread in a very long time.

It probably would have just been easier for me to say 'I agree'. But this deserves special commendation.

10/10 people say, the impulse engines look better on saucer....well maybe add another variant ? pylons without engines, and hull with engines ? In that way all parties are happy.

It doesn't make sense to put them there anyway, why lead the impulse exhaust across whole ship, when obviously the reactor is in the saucer section.

Well thank you very much.

I'm in school for game art and one of the things we've learned about thus far is how tv, movie, and game companies sometimes use texture skins on low res models to save on production times and costs. These are mostly used for objects that are going to remain background pieces and/or going to be motion blurred. Every now and then it becomes necessary to take one of these background pieces out of the background and into the foreground. When doing so (especially when detailed references aren't available) it becomes necessary to draw heavily on the details included in the texture skin mixed with some creative license and a desire for what you want people (and in some cases a desire for what the people expect) to see.

At this point I'm just trying to put some of my schooling to use, if anything JamJamz and the whole STO art crew deserve the credit, working on our nit-picks as well as developing new, interesting content all the while not ripping off the heads of the over-complainers. They're the professionals here I'm just a student that happens to be a little much obsessed with the Steamrunner lol.

now that is an amazing model. sure the level of detail couldn't be pulled off here, but the ventral phaser array placement, the arch at the back of the saucer being integrated instead of being a pointless arch, the impulse engines, and the big o'll torp launchers or DHC ports in the nose i like much better then the in game interpretation. and i think the steemy in game is one of the best done models so far, regardless of artist's prerogative issues i have with it.

The Nebula has no impulse engines in canon either. Why not remove them from the current Steamrunner model if you don't want to move them into the saucer section? That would be canon at least.