Some more thoughts on the Constellation class

[cowboy40]

First off i take no credit for the pic, it was found at Memory Alpha site..

Going to lay out some ground rules here for my thoughts. I am placing this line of thought strictly on FASA and what she can do in it. Next, the evidence tells us that the Constellation class cruisers are a product of the late Kirk era (TMP), and are a contemporary to the Constitution refits (aka Enterprise class). Also, I DO NOT buy into that bullshit of megaphasers and other uber weapons: those damn things were contrived by lazy captains, and they belong where they were created, back in Star Fleet Battles.

1. I really believe FASA made a mistake when they treated the engineering on this ship as just a two nacelle ship and this lead to the weights and movement being way off. Once treated proper this ship will require a lot of power on the grid. In my modifications that i am going to post here. I treated the engines as a very heavy four nacelle ship...requiring a lot of weight and superstructure. That only made sense. This weight forces the ship way up in class...She weights in as a class XV ship of 273,598 tons. This requires a very large movement to point ratio of 8 points for one move. I have her equipped with four FWG-1 engines though moving this large bulk of a ship, each engine points drop from 30 to 23...there has to be a compromise in the ships somewhere. Her impulse is based of the FIF-1 system...a tolal of 108 points of power are given. With a speed of Warp 8 and emergency of warp 10 that is pretty good.

2. I like the weapons layout that FASA treats us with. Both the FH-14 phasers and the FP-4 torpedoes give us weapons that have pretty much the same ranges. This does give us a good opportunity to close in and make good hits.

3. with one hell of a strong superstructure...40 points and a very efficient 1/4 ratio FSS shielding system that at the cost of 5 points to each facing brings the strength to 20, and she can power these shields to full and have enough juice left to power weapons and move...

With engines being redundant, a robust hull and very modern offensive and defensive systems the ships can eat a lot of fire before her shields are worn down, thus she can stand the fight longer then any other cruiser in the known FASAverse Star Fleet. This also means she can stand and deliver full weapons power if she decides not to move...Stand FAST and become a base of fire.

Her large hull gives her room for labs or they could possibly be of a modular bay configuration. This makes them very versatile ships. Configure them as warships, shuttle carriers, or long range explorers.

Biggest downsize, they will be carrying almost all of the latest tech to the far reaches of space and along the borders of the enemies of the Federation. They are also very expensive and this will make them a rare asset that Star Fleet might not want to put in harm's way...

Just some thoughts on these great ships...

[cowboy40]

When you look at this version of the Constellation, You can see that she is still based on proven technology.

First off lets look at the engines on this beast. They are the same engines you would find on an Enterprise Mk.III (Constitution Refit). There are just more of them. The FWG-1 engines that make up the warp drive of this vessel are actually 2270s' tech...you know they powered the Enterprise Mk.I class ships. The FIF-1 impulse drive on this class of ships was the main impulse drive on the Enterprise Mk.II type. The irony these choice of engineering plant weighs more then an Enterprise class ship at 200,000 mt. This makes of the bulk of this ship.

As for systems, pretty much everything was already developed in other programs. The master computer system, the M-6A, again, was pulled from the Enterprise Mk.III.

Her torpedo systems are designed around the FP-4 torpedo of the 2270s, though these are fired from multi-arc launchers, being tech developed for the Excelsior program. Her phasers are brand new developments. they are designed to balance the range of the weapons systems. Even though they are stronger in power output to the FH-11 found on many starships, they are lighter and more accurate, but this comes at the cost of range.

The defensive shielding was already in development as well. That being the FSS quadary shields found on the Excelsior class.

So as you can tell, there really wasn't much new thrown into the design. What was new was in the way the tech was integrated and deployed.

[cowboy40]

Another benefit, of using these systems from other projects, is that you aren't placing a larger number of spare parts into the logistics stream. Really, the only new parts are the FH-14 phasers; compare this to the Excelsior when she entered the fleet pool. Excelsior brought in a large new warp drive in the form of the FTWA-1 engine, She brought in the large FIG impulse drive, she brought in the FSS shield generators, and a brand new M-8 computer to operate the new parts. All these systems were large and they were expensive.

The way the Constellation design team used mostly existing parts, they were able to cut down development time and expense....

[SITZKRIEG!]

I understand that supposedly someone reverse engineered (or leaked?) the original calculations for equipment so fans could make their own but I'm always hesitant to do so myself so have stayed away from ships like this with nonstandard nacelle numbers. I don't have any issue though with others experimenting with the stats though. The only time I did something like this was to create a custom dreadnought with three nacelles that could separate into two smaller ships (one single and one double nacelled). I used the official stats and just changed the name and number of nacelles but otherwise followed the Construction Manual rules and matched the separated/combined superstructure exactly and the mass as close as I could.