Waaaaay back in '78, space artist Robert McCall was asked to provide some designs for the upcoming STAR TREK movie revival. One of his designs was an Enterprise with a triangular lower hull. The design stuck in my head. It combined with the idea of a starship specifically designed to fight a Doomsday Machine. Commodore Matt Decker proved the extragalactic threats could be fought by multiple attackers and destroyed by detonating a starship's engines inside its maw. Thus the Decker Class was born. The mother ship is as heavily armed as a Dreadnought Class. It also carries two Lamprey Class escorts and a number of shuttles. Each Lamprey is armed with a top-mounted phaser. Should a Doomsday Machine be encountered, the Lampreys detach and flank the target. When the opportunity arises, one Lamprey heads for the maw. After the crew transports to safety, the Lamprey detonates and presumably ends the threat. To date, the Deckers have yet to be tested this way. In the meantime, the Deckers serve on the Federation frontier as self-contained squadrons. The Lampreys are capable of atmospheric flight. As such they are useful for landing on worlds where environmental conditions prohibit transporter use. Acrylic on illustration board, approx 36" wide ------------------+------------------------ Addenda-- Here's a pair of later versions of the Decker Class. http://excalibur.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=1132944&user_id=273925&np&np The Note there credits Syd Mead with the triangular design. I'll have to find my old copy of MEDIASCENE where I saw this long ago. Might have been McQuarrie.