Difference between pages "Challenger Class" and "Inquiry Class"

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{{Specifications
 
{{Specifications
| image = [[Image:Challengerclass.jpg|275px]]
+
| image = [[Image:Inquiry_class.png|275px]]
| name = ''Challenger''
+
| name = ''Inquiry''
 
| affiliation = Starfleet
 
| affiliation = Starfleet
| role = Scout/Courier
+
| role = Heavy Cruiser
| dateEntered = 2350
+
| dateEntered = 2390
 
| expectedLife = 80 Years
 
| expectedLife = 80 Years
 
| expectedRefit = 10 Years
 
| expectedRefit = 10 Years
| timeResupply = 1 Year
+
| timeResupply = 2 Years
| crewComplement = 140
+
| crewComplement = 350
| emergencyCap = 500
+
| emergencyCap = 5,000
| length = 394 meters
+
| length = 460 meters
| width = 264 meters
+
| width = 210 meters
| height = 115 meters
+
| height = 80 meters
| decks = 8
+
| decks = 18
 
| propulsionSystem = Matter/Antimatter powered warp drive
 
| propulsionSystem = Matter/Antimatter powered warp drive
| cruiseSpeed = Warp 6
+
| cruiseSpeed = Warp 9
 
| maxSpeed = Warp 9
 
| maxSpeed = Warp 9
| emergencySpeed = Warp 9.6 (12 hours)
+
| emergencySpeed = Warp 9.99 (36 hours)
| energyWeapons =*6x Type-X Phaser Arrays
+
| energyWeapons =*11x Type-XII Phaser Arrays
| torpLaunchers =*2 aft
+
| torpLaunchers =*2 forward
| torpPayload =*40 Photon Torpedoes
+
* 2 aft
 +
| torpPayload =*200 Photon Torpedoes
 +
*200 Quantum Torpedoes
 
| shields =Multi-Layered Shielding System  
 
| shields =Multi-Layered Shielding System  
| shuttleBays =1
+
| shuttleBays =2
| shuttles =4
+
| shuttles =10
| runabouts =
+
| runabouts =2
}}
+
}}Designed in response to Starfleet’s defense-oriented turn in the late 2380s, the ''Inquiry''-class heavy cruiser is a fast, well-armed starship deployed in large numbers near the Federation’s borders. As standardization was a focus with the design, they are able to be produced nearly anywhere within the Federation, and so their ubiquity has made them a part of a whole generation of Starfleet officers’ first experiences in the fleet.
  
== Class Overview ==
+
=== Science and Exploration ===
 +
Taking cues from ancestors like the ''Constitution'' and contemporaries like the ''Luna'', this heavy cruiser design has a full complement of generalist science labs and sensor arrays, giving it the ability to analyze the wide variety of phenomena it will encounter on its missions. Though ''Inquiry''-class was designed primarily for defensive purposes, it still conducts a full range of scientific and exploratory surveys during the course of its normal duties, making initial discoveries that then get followed up on by science vessels.
  
=== Science and Exploration ===
+
''Inquiry''-class ships are fully-capable of independent exploration beyond Federation space, though they lack the range of the ''Luna'' or the versatility of the ''Nebula''; Starfleet tends to keep them close to home, though, and anytime they’re found too far from the frontier, it’s a sign that Starfleet is looking for some threat.
The ''Challenger''-class was never intended for sustained independent exploratory missions outside of Federation space, but rather is more suited for scouting missions relatively close to the border. Thanks to her high top speed even for a vessel over 40 years old by present Starfleet standards, she can take basic scans of numerous systems quickly to help Starfleet decide where to send its more adept scientific platforms. These vessels are equipped with a relatively large complement of probes and observation drones which can be left to linger in systems that they’ve scouted to gather more data. In addition, the stellar cartography and astrometrics divisions on these ships are larger than other ships of their size, due to their role as a forward scout.  
 
  
 
=== Diplomacy ===
 
=== Diplomacy ===
One of the primary duties for ''Challenger''-class starships is to serve as diplomatic couriers, and as such, they are very adept at transporting and hosting dignitaries. They are used both to transport Federation envoys and for serving as transports for races who do not have adequate interstellar transportation of their own. These ships can transport delegations of over one-hundred people quite easily and in comfort, which makes them ideal for supporting extended negotiations requiring larger staffs of assistants and aides. While they do also have their own conference facilities aboard, but more often their purpose is to take diplomats to negotiations, rather than to host those negotiations onboard.
+
Like all Starfleet ships of her size, the ''Inquiry'' is capable of a range of diplomatic missions, including multi-party talks and first contact scenarios. As a well-armed and heavily-shielded vessel, the ''Inquiry''-class is ideal for situations where combat may be a result of a failed negotiation but when a larger ship like a ''Sovereign'' would be too conspicuous or threatening to send instead. As on the ''Luna'', diplomatic facilities aboard the ''Inquiry'' are capable of supporting a full range of environments for nearly any known species, which makes it well-suited to missions involving races that can’t tolerate an M-class environment.
  
 
=== Engineering ===
 
=== Engineering ===
Very unusual for Starfleet ships, the ''Challenger''-class has its nacelles arranged vertically rather than horizontally. In addition, these nacelles are slightly off-center from one another, which makes them more efficient at higher speeds than other ships, though inefficient at lower speeds. These warp nacelles are also over-sized and can propel the ship at speeds similar to their much larger contemporaries, the ''Galaxy'' and ''Nebula''-classes. Impulse power is provided by a pair of engines located on either side of the saucer adjacent to the long, thin secondary hull which contains the warp core arranged in a horizontal fashion. Ejection of the core and antimatter pods can be accomplished directly from the rear of the vessel.  
+
Taking the majority of its inspiration from the ''Sovereign''-class and sharing design features from the ''Prometheus'', and ''Akira''-classes, the ''Inquiry''-class is a compact, angular cruiser with a roughly triangular primary hull and a truncated, boxy secondary hull, which is meant to both improve warp field dynamics and to minimize the vessel’s target profile. Compared to other heavy cruisers, the ''Inquiry''-class is more compact, but its systems are no less advanced; it relies on many of the advances in automation developed for the ''Prometheus'' to reduce the need for a large crew, which further allows it to approach the performance of an explorer with a smaller platform.
 +
 
 +
The Class-9 warp drive employed aboard the ''Inquiry''-class is finely-tuned for its hull geometry and provides the fastest top speed of any heavy cruiser in the fleet, an extremely impressive Warp 9.99. The power generation systems are all reinforced and have been built with added redundancies to increase its combat survivability. Nearly the entire hull is covered with a substantial layer of ablative armor, even to the point of employing an armored grille over the main deflector dish to protect it from harm.
 +
 
 +
The impulse engines are located in the saucer section and are oversized for a ship of her size, both to increase sublight speed and to take advantage of larger fusion reactors to power other onboard systems.
  
Maintenance needs for this class of ship are above average for a vessel of her size, balanced between engines that need constant fine-tuning and other primary systems that are less complicated.
+
Auxiliary craft support is provided by a large shuttlebay on the stern capable of handling all manner of shuttles and runabouts, as well as a smaller shuttlebay on the bow of the ship in the saucer, similar to the one found aboard the ''Akira''-class, though there is no conduit within the ship connecting the two bays. While the ''Inquiry''-class does not routinely embark fighters, it was designed to be able to handle a squadron of Valkyrie-class fighters which would deploy from the forward shuttlebay for combat, and then in the event of a retreat could be recovered via the aft shuttlebay under the cover of the ship’s weapons.  
  
The shuttle bay is contained in a “hump” under the dorsal warp nacelle pylon, with space for several large shuttlecraft in addition to the captain’s yacht under the primary hull, a feature that was introduced on this class of starship.
+
Two large cargo bays are accessible via hatches on the underside of the saucer, which could easily carry small craft in a pinch, but which are meant to hold vast amounts of cargo for humanitarian projects.
 +
 
 +
A unique feature of the ''Inquiry''-class are mission equipment bays on the aft corners under the saucer section. Round, iris-style hatches cover a large internal bay with power and computer connections allowing for the installation of specialized modules such as sensor pods, weapons pods, or other mission-specific options. In addition, these bays can also be used to deploy experimental munitions, such as long-range torpedoes or drones, as well as small craft such as runabouts depending on what the mission calls for.
  
 
=== Tactical ===
 
=== Tactical ===
The Challenger-class has Type-X phaser arrays and two aft firing torpedo tubes, but her primary directive in combat situations whether serving as a scout or as a courier is to run. When forced to fight, she will use her great speed and maneuverability to lob torpedoes at an enemy as she jumps to warp. In fleet engagement, she is restricted to a point defense or picket role but is generally wasted in these situations.
+
Combat is where the ''Inquiry''-class truly shines, with eleven Type-XII phaser arrays (six dorsal and five ventral) and four burst-fire torpedo launchers (two forward and two aft). The shield generators are borrowed directly from the ''Sovereign''-class and the aforementioned ablative armor covers all critical systems, which gives the ship impressive defensive coverage. In addition, the mission equipment bays give the ship many options for additional offensive and defensive systems. Simply put, this is the strongest combat vessel of all of the Federation’s mid-sized starships, other than dedicated escorts like the ''Manticore'' and ''Prometheus''.
 +
 
 +
Like the Resolute-class, there are also additional hardpoints around the ship that can be equipped with additional weapons, such as pulse phaser cannons in the bow and micro torpedo launchers on the superstructure of the hull, as are found on the ''Sovereign''-class. This is meant to allow the ship to be easily refit into an even more capable tactical platform in the advent of war, thanks to lessons learned from the Dominion conflict.
 +
 
 +
The ''Inquiry''-class is highly maneuverable compared not only to her larger cousins but also ships in her own size class, which allows her to literally run circles around threat vessels to take full advantage of her many weapons emplacements. Coupled with her shields and armor which allow her to shrug off most hits, the ''Inquiry'' is an extremely tough ship and a match on her own for nearly anything she would encounter.
  
 
=== Shipboard Life ===
 
=== Shipboard Life ===
Life aboard Challenger-class ships is comfortable and generally without much excitement. They have similar accommodations to Galaxy-class ships, given their role as a first impression for the Federation in diplomatic situations, which means access to holodecks and other recreational facilities. Most of them have been retrofitted with shipwide holographic projectors and their medical facilities are oversized and more capable than other small ships. Crews aboard these vessels tend to be relatively junior, especially their captains, as they’re not often sent on assignments without direct supervision by a senior diplomat or admiral.
+
While this ship has capabilities approaching the ''Sovereign''-class, automation means that it has less than half the crew complement. This allows the ''Inquiry''-class to have a comfortable standard of accommodations, though certainly not as luxurious of one as large explorers.
  
In addition to their diplomatic role, they are often chosen by flag officers as transports within Federation space, when it is assumed that they will not need to engage in any command and control responsibilities. They are often also assigned as support ships to larger starbases, given their low crew requirements and lack of utility for exploratory missions.
+
A unique ship-board feature is the recreation areas that ring the saucer section. Connected together as a promenade on either side of the ship, these two-story areas provide a sense of space and openness to help address the claustrophobia that can sometimes come from serving aboard a starship, while also providing extra space for triage and refugee accommodations should the need arise. Holographic belts of green space go down the center of the promenade and lounges can be called up as needed for different group sizes. A traditional forward lounge does exist above the forward shuttlebay, though.
  
82 six-person escape pods give this ship an upper safe capacity of 492 passengers and crew, though they usually operate with much smaller numbers.
+
Unlike other starship classes, there are fewer specialized, physical recreation areas. While there are two gymnasia and a handful of mess halls, all sports courts, theaters, salons, and the arboretum have been replaced by holodecks or holosuites, which further gives the ship flexibility in situations where it might need to house refugees or handle other crises.
 +
 
 +
Medical facilities are state-of-the-art, but compact, as on the ''Sovereign''-class. Two sickbay modules provide support for the crew in the primary and secondary hulls, with large-scale medical events behind handled through the multiple holographically-configurable spaces available on the ship.
 +
 
 +
As Starfleet moves into the 25th Century, the ''Inquiry''-class has been produced in large numbers and has become for a generation of Starfleet officers their first experience out of the academy on an actual starship. These ships of the line also represent an era in Starfleet Command’s thinking, so crews coming up on these ships have all been trained with the sense that Starfleet’s primary role is to keep threats outside of the Federation’s borders, while still exploring out and seeking the unknown in the process. So, to have served on one of these ships is to learn a very different ethos than on other heavy cruisers, one of duty and service over curiosity.
  
 
== Class History ==
 
== Class History ==
As the fleet modernization in the 2340s and 2350s continued, the development towards the large ''Galaxy'' and ''Nebula''-class starships required testing of a number of their components. The ''Challenger''-class was initially developed as a testbed for the new warp coils that would be used both aboard these classes and the ''New Orleans''-class frigate. As the design evolved, Starfleet opted for a spaceframe that could also be used as a diplomatic courier or scout vessel, though it wasn’t intended that many would be ordered.
+
In 2385, everything changed for Starfleet and the United Federation of Planets with the destruction of their most important shipbuilding facility: Utopia Planitia. This not only ended the Starfleet effort to evacuate Romulus, but also marked a shift for Starfleet from an outward looking, exploratory posture to an inward looking, defensive one. After an evaluation of remaining shipbuilding capacities and fleet needs, Starfleet commissioned the ''Inquiry''-class as a combat-enhanced heavy cruiser design which would shore up the Federation’s borders against the chaos anticipated alongside the imminent destabilization of the Romulan state.
 +
 
 +
The ''Sovereign''-class was identified as Starfleet’s most successful multi-mission tactical design and the ''Inquiry''-class was designed over a shortened period by shrinking this design and increasing its level of automation, resulting in what some at the design bureau called a “pocket battleship,” though that terminology has never been used in official parlance. The brief also called for a starship that could be more easily produced at standard starbases than other medium-sized ships could be. As such, the ''Inquiry''’s components, while advanced, are also ruggedized, simplified versions of the ones found aboard their larger cousin, meaning that they can be more easily mass produced.
 +
 
 +
Unlike other classes which are largely dependent on a small number of advanced fleet yards to construct them, the ''Inquiry''-class could and was produced at a large number of facilities across the Federation, allowing for proliferation at a scale not seen above the size of a frigate in Starfleet’s prior history. With their modest crew complements, they were just as easy to deploy as they were to build.  
  
The ''Challenger''-class was also seen as an opportunity for experimentation, given that they weren’t a critical production line, which led to their unusual vertical engine orientation, a design that had fewer benefits than first envisioned. Production of these vessels was given low priority and only a handful of them were built alongside their larger cousins initially, though a steady production run continued after they proved themselves useful as a fast transport for ambassadors and admirals.
+
Mass production, however, meant standardization. While many other starship classes had variants as the years progressed (with some varying month-to-month as new equipment came online) the ''Inquiry''-class was kept to a much more regimented standard. While most ''Odyssey''-class ships were quite different from one another due to their long construction times, ''Inquiry''-class ships could be built in a year and were identical to one another within distinct “block” of subclasses, which kept production simple. The ''Inquiry''-class (Block I) itself was first launched in 2390, with the Block II units led by the ''Ride'' coming online in 2395, followed by the Block III units led by the ''Zheng He'' in 2399. Each of these blocks represented incremental, defined improvements over the original, rather than the more fluid differences found in other starship classes.
  
One of these vessels, the ''Buran'', was lost at Wolf 359, but the class has otherwise served without notoriety.
+
The starship class has proven to be effective in service, with remarkably few design-related flaws discovered during the course of their service, due to so much of the design being derived from older, proven classes. A contemporary with the ''Resolute''-class heavy cruiser, the two designs tend to be sent on very different missions: the ''Resolute'' staying largely close to the core and the ''Inquiry'' sent to the borders; there are currently many more ''Inquiry''-class ships in the fleet than ''Resolute''-class ones.
  
 
== In Play ==
 
== In Play ==
  
* This class of starship is not as flashy or as capable as her larger cousins from the same era, namely the Galaxy and the Nebula, but rather is a small cruiser suitable mainly for courier missions and limited exploration. This class of ship is ideal for a starbase support ship (either as part of a game or as its own game operating close to a base) or another role in which it is not expected to be independent for long periods of time.
+
* As described by Captain Riker, this is Starfleet’s “toughest, fastest ship,” though factoring in a little bluster we can amend that to being Starfleet’s toughest, fastest ship in this size range. Broadly speaking, it’s a smaller version of the Sovereign-class and has similar capabilities.
* With aft-firing photon torpedo launchers only and high top speed, the Challenger-class is meant to run away from threats, often to protect whatever valuable cargo or passengers it has aboard. If forced to fight, it would need to rely on its maneuverability and seek cover as quickly as possible.
+
* These ships are pretty common, given their large production run, so if your character entered service somewhere between 2390 and the present, it’s very likely that they’ve served aboard one of these ships.
* This class would be a good starter ship for a character's first command. Old but not completely antique, it's reasonable that a Lieutenant Commander or Commander might be assigned to captain such a courier, especially for missions within Federation space. The vast majority of these ships serve quietly and without much distinction, performing the milk runs that keep Starfleet going behind the scenes.
+
* Because there are so many of them, ''Inquiry''-class captains range from relative novices to grizzled veterans.
  
 
[[Category:Federation starship classes]]
 
[[Category:Federation starship classes]]
[[Category:Scout]]
+
[[Category:Heavy Cruisers]]

Revision as of 07:23, 1 February 2021

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Inquiry class.png
''Inquiry''
Information
Affiliation

Starfleet

Role

Heavy Cruiser

Date Entered Service

2390

Expected Refit Cycle

10 Years

Time Between Resupply

2 Years

Crew Capacity
Standard Complement

350

Emergency Capacity

5,000

Dimensions
Length

460 meters

Width

210 meters

Height

80 meters

Decks

18

Propulsion
Propulsion System

Matter/Antimatter powered warp drive

Cruising Speed

Warp 9

Maximum Speed

Warp 9

Emergency Speed

Warp 9.99 (36 hours)

Armaments
Energy Weapons
  • 11x Type-XII Phaser Arrays
Torpedo Launchers
  • 2 forward
  • 2 aft
Torpedo Payload
  • 200 Photon Torpedoes
  • 200 Quantum Torpedoes
Shields

Multi-Layered Shielding System

Auxiliary Craft
Shuttle Bays

2

Shuttles

10

Runabouts

2

Designed in response to Starfleet’s defense-oriented turn in the late 2380s, the Inquiry-class heavy cruiser is a fast, well-armed starship deployed in large numbers near the Federation’s borders. As standardization was a focus with the design, they are able to be produced nearly anywhere within the Federation, and so their ubiquity has made them a part of a whole generation of Starfleet officers’ first experiences in the fleet.

Science and Exploration

Taking cues from ancestors like the Constitution and contemporaries like the Luna, this heavy cruiser design has a full complement of generalist science labs and sensor arrays, giving it the ability to analyze the wide variety of phenomena it will encounter on its missions. Though Inquiry-class was designed primarily for defensive purposes, it still conducts a full range of scientific and exploratory surveys during the course of its normal duties, making initial discoveries that then get followed up on by science vessels.

Inquiry-class ships are fully-capable of independent exploration beyond Federation space, though they lack the range of the Luna or the versatility of the Nebula; Starfleet tends to keep them close to home, though, and anytime they’re found too far from the frontier, it’s a sign that Starfleet is looking for some threat.

Diplomacy

Like all Starfleet ships of her size, the Inquiry is capable of a range of diplomatic missions, including multi-party talks and first contact scenarios. As a well-armed and heavily-shielded vessel, the Inquiry-class is ideal for situations where combat may be a result of a failed negotiation but when a larger ship like a Sovereign would be too conspicuous or threatening to send instead. As on the Luna, diplomatic facilities aboard the Inquiry are capable of supporting a full range of environments for nearly any known species, which makes it well-suited to missions involving races that can’t tolerate an M-class environment.

Engineering

Taking the majority of its inspiration from the Sovereign-class and sharing design features from the Prometheus, and Akira-classes, the Inquiry-class is a compact, angular cruiser with a roughly triangular primary hull and a truncated, boxy secondary hull, which is meant to both improve warp field dynamics and to minimize the vessel’s target profile. Compared to other heavy cruisers, the Inquiry-class is more compact, but its systems are no less advanced; it relies on many of the advances in automation developed for the Prometheus to reduce the need for a large crew, which further allows it to approach the performance of an explorer with a smaller platform.

The Class-9 warp drive employed aboard the Inquiry-class is finely-tuned for its hull geometry and provides the fastest top speed of any heavy cruiser in the fleet, an extremely impressive Warp 9.99. The power generation systems are all reinforced and have been built with added redundancies to increase its combat survivability. Nearly the entire hull is covered with a substantial layer of ablative armor, even to the point of employing an armored grille over the main deflector dish to protect it from harm.

The impulse engines are located in the saucer section and are oversized for a ship of her size, both to increase sublight speed and to take advantage of larger fusion reactors to power other onboard systems.

Auxiliary craft support is provided by a large shuttlebay on the stern capable of handling all manner of shuttles and runabouts, as well as a smaller shuttlebay on the bow of the ship in the saucer, similar to the one found aboard the Akira-class, though there is no conduit within the ship connecting the two bays. While the Inquiry-class does not routinely embark fighters, it was designed to be able to handle a squadron of Valkyrie-class fighters which would deploy from the forward shuttlebay for combat, and then in the event of a retreat could be recovered via the aft shuttlebay under the cover of the ship’s weapons.

Two large cargo bays are accessible via hatches on the underside of the saucer, which could easily carry small craft in a pinch, but which are meant to hold vast amounts of cargo for humanitarian projects.

A unique feature of the Inquiry-class are mission equipment bays on the aft corners under the saucer section. Round, iris-style hatches cover a large internal bay with power and computer connections allowing for the installation of specialized modules such as sensor pods, weapons pods, or other mission-specific options. In addition, these bays can also be used to deploy experimental munitions, such as long-range torpedoes or drones, as well as small craft such as runabouts depending on what the mission calls for.

Tactical

Combat is where the Inquiry-class truly shines, with eleven Type-XII phaser arrays (six dorsal and five ventral) and four burst-fire torpedo launchers (two forward and two aft). The shield generators are borrowed directly from the Sovereign-class and the aforementioned ablative armor covers all critical systems, which gives the ship impressive defensive coverage. In addition, the mission equipment bays give the ship many options for additional offensive and defensive systems. Simply put, this is the strongest combat vessel of all of the Federation’s mid-sized starships, other than dedicated escorts like the Manticore and Prometheus.

Like the Resolute-class, there are also additional hardpoints around the ship that can be equipped with additional weapons, such as pulse phaser cannons in the bow and micro torpedo launchers on the superstructure of the hull, as are found on the Sovereign-class. This is meant to allow the ship to be easily refit into an even more capable tactical platform in the advent of war, thanks to lessons learned from the Dominion conflict.

The Inquiry-class is highly maneuverable compared not only to her larger cousins but also ships in her own size class, which allows her to literally run circles around threat vessels to take full advantage of her many weapons emplacements. Coupled with her shields and armor which allow her to shrug off most hits, the Inquiry is an extremely tough ship and a match on her own for nearly anything she would encounter.

Shipboard Life

While this ship has capabilities approaching the Sovereign-class, automation means that it has less than half the crew complement. This allows the Inquiry-class to have a comfortable standard of accommodations, though certainly not as luxurious of one as large explorers.

A unique ship-board feature is the recreation areas that ring the saucer section. Connected together as a promenade on either side of the ship, these two-story areas provide a sense of space and openness to help address the claustrophobia that can sometimes come from serving aboard a starship, while also providing extra space for triage and refugee accommodations should the need arise. Holographic belts of green space go down the center of the promenade and lounges can be called up as needed for different group sizes. A traditional forward lounge does exist above the forward shuttlebay, though.

Unlike other starship classes, there are fewer specialized, physical recreation areas. While there are two gymnasia and a handful of mess halls, all sports courts, theaters, salons, and the arboretum have been replaced by holodecks or holosuites, which further gives the ship flexibility in situations where it might need to house refugees or handle other crises.

Medical facilities are state-of-the-art, but compact, as on the Sovereign-class. Two sickbay modules provide support for the crew in the primary and secondary hulls, with large-scale medical events behind handled through the multiple holographically-configurable spaces available on the ship.

As Starfleet moves into the 25th Century, the Inquiry-class has been produced in large numbers and has become for a generation of Starfleet officers their first experience out of the academy on an actual starship. These ships of the line also represent an era in Starfleet Command’s thinking, so crews coming up on these ships have all been trained with the sense that Starfleet’s primary role is to keep threats outside of the Federation’s borders, while still exploring out and seeking the unknown in the process. So, to have served on one of these ships is to learn a very different ethos than on other heavy cruisers, one of duty and service over curiosity.

Class History

In 2385, everything changed for Starfleet and the United Federation of Planets with the destruction of their most important shipbuilding facility: Utopia Planitia. This not only ended the Starfleet effort to evacuate Romulus, but also marked a shift for Starfleet from an outward looking, exploratory posture to an inward looking, defensive one. After an evaluation of remaining shipbuilding capacities and fleet needs, Starfleet commissioned the Inquiry-class as a combat-enhanced heavy cruiser design which would shore up the Federation’s borders against the chaos anticipated alongside the imminent destabilization of the Romulan state.

The Sovereign-class was identified as Starfleet’s most successful multi-mission tactical design and the Inquiry-class was designed over a shortened period by shrinking this design and increasing its level of automation, resulting in what some at the design bureau called a “pocket battleship,” though that terminology has never been used in official parlance. The brief also called for a starship that could be more easily produced at standard starbases than other medium-sized ships could be. As such, the Inquiry’s components, while advanced, are also ruggedized, simplified versions of the ones found aboard their larger cousin, meaning that they can be more easily mass produced.

Unlike other classes which are largely dependent on a small number of advanced fleet yards to construct them, the Inquiry-class could and was produced at a large number of facilities across the Federation, allowing for proliferation at a scale not seen above the size of a frigate in Starfleet’s prior history. With their modest crew complements, they were just as easy to deploy as they were to build.

Mass production, however, meant standardization. While many other starship classes had variants as the years progressed (with some varying month-to-month as new equipment came online) the Inquiry-class was kept to a much more regimented standard. While most Odyssey-class ships were quite different from one another due to their long construction times, Inquiry-class ships could be built in a year and were identical to one another within distinct “block” of subclasses, which kept production simple. The Inquiry-class (Block I) itself was first launched in 2390, with the Block II units led by the Ride coming online in 2395, followed by the Block III units led by the Zheng He in 2399. Each of these blocks represented incremental, defined improvements over the original, rather than the more fluid differences found in other starship classes.

The starship class has proven to be effective in service, with remarkably few design-related flaws discovered during the course of their service, due to so much of the design being derived from older, proven classes. A contemporary with the Resolute-class heavy cruiser, the two designs tend to be sent on very different missions: the Resolute staying largely close to the core and the Inquiry sent to the borders; there are currently many more Inquiry-class ships in the fleet than Resolute-class ones.

In Play

  • As described by Captain Riker, this is Starfleet’s “toughest, fastest ship,” though factoring in a little bluster we can amend that to being Starfleet’s toughest, fastest ship in this size range. Broadly speaking, it’s a smaller version of the Sovereign-class and has similar capabilities.
  • These ships are pretty common, given their large production run, so if your character entered service somewhere between 2390 and the present, it’s very likely that they’ve served aboard one of these ships.
  • Because there are so many of them, Inquiry-class captains range from relative novices to grizzled veterans.