Bravo Fleet
Difference between pages "Excelsior Refit Class" and "Inquiry Class"

Difference between pages "Excelsior Refit Class" and "Inquiry Class"

From Bravo Fleet
(Difference between pages)
(Created page with "{{Specifications | image = 275px | name = ''Excelsior Refit'' | affiliation = Starfleet | role = Heavy Cruiser | dateEntered = 2294 | expectedLife = 1...")
 
m
 
Line 1: Line 1:
{{Specifications
{{Specifications
| image = [[Image:Excelrefit.png|275px]]
| image = [[Image:Inquiry_class.png|275px]]
| name = ''Excelsior Refit''
| name = ''Inquiry''
| affiliation = Starfleet
| affiliation = Starfleet
| role = Heavy Cruiser
| role = Heavy Cruiser
| dateEntered = 2294
| dateEntered = 2390
| expectedLife = 100 Years
| expectedLife = 80 Years
| expectedRefit = 10 Years
| expectedRefit = 10 Years
| timeResupply = 5 Years
| timeResupply = 2 Years
| crewComplement = 650
| crewComplement = 350
| emergencyCap = 1,500
| emergencyCap = 5,000
| length = 467 meters
| length = 460 meters
| width = 181.6 meters
| width = 210 meters
| height = 77.8 meters
| height = 80 meters
| decks = 28
| decks = 18
| propulsionSystem = Matter/Antimatter powered warp drive
| propulsionSystem = Matter/Antimatter powered warp drive
| cruiseSpeed = Warp 7
| cruiseSpeed = Warp 9
| maxSpeed = Warp 8.8
| maxSpeed = Warp 9
| emergencySpeed = Warp 9.4 (12 hours)
| emergencySpeed = Warp 9.99 (36 hours)
| energyWeapons =*12x Type-VIII Dual Emitter Phaser Banks
| energyWeapons =*11x Type-XII Phaser Arrays
| torpLaunchers =*2 forward
| torpLaunchers =*2 forward
*2 aft
* 2 aft
| torpPayload =*200 Photon Torpedoes
| torpPayload =*200 Photon Torpedoes
*200 Quantum Torpedoes
| shields =Multi-Layered Shielding System  
| shields =Multi-Layered Shielding System  
| shuttleBays =2
| shuttleBays =2
| shuttles =10
| shuttles =10
| runabouts =2
| 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 ===
Like any ship class, changes were made to the Excelsior throughout her build program. While most of these were relatively minor and left little outward appearance of change evident, in 2293 a very significant change was authorized for the USS ''Enterprise'' NCC-1701-B which was then in the later stages of construction. These included an extra set of impulse engines on the saucer section, flares on the side of the engineering hull, and a minor change in configuration for the warp nacelles. These modifications were designed to increase the Excelsior’s already robust exploratory capabilities to include missions of even greater durations, with additional fuel and energy production systems, as well as substantial mission-configurable spaces in the hull flares for scientific equipment. The Enterprise herself was equipped with advanced long-range sensors.
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.
 
By 2310, the advanced sensors that the vessels had been outfit with had become part of the standard sensor package on all Starfleet ships. The promised increased maneuverability of the additional impulse engines had never truly lived up to Starfleet’s expectations, and it was becoming increasingly felt that the hull space that was given up for additional impulse reactors and engine systems could be put to better use in order to house advanced scientific equipment and facilities. By 2315, all following ''Excelsiors'' were once again built to the original configuration. The altered design have been variously refered to as the “''Enteprise''-class”, the “long-hull group”, or the “''Excelsior'' refit”. However, Starfleet never held any institutional difference between the long-hull and standard Excelsior configurations, and refits and upgrades have been applied to both groups equally in the intervening years leaving little difference, aside from the obvious cosmetic ones, between the two.


=== 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.
Excelsior-class starships have been used both as frontline explorers and as scientific platforms for use within Federation space. In their day, they were the most capable explorers Starfleet had, but their scientific facilities in the 2390s lag far behind more modern ships. One advantage they have over smaller, more modern ships is ample space for mission-configurable labs and sensors. It is rare to have an Excelsior-class ship posted on a true exploratory mission in the present era, but they’re often dispatched on scientific surveys to follow up on discoveries made by more modern ships. They remain relatively fast and as fewer of them are devoted to front-line duties, they make excellent transports for scientific expeditions in areas where a science vessel might be more vulnerable.


=== Diplomacy ===
=== Diplomacy ===
Excelsior-class ships have long been used as transports for flag officers and ambassadors, thanks to their good speed and tactical abilities, though they have fallen out of favor in recent decades. They continue to be used for this purpose with smaller crews, however, especially by flag officers who prefer not to tie up a more modern asset. They have long served as a symbol of the Federation and have an instantly-recognizable silhouette, and their relative economy makes them preferable to larger ships for lower-tier negotiations.  
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.


These ships have several onboard conference lounges but are inferior to their successor classes in terms of space to host diplomatic entourages.  
=== 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.


=== Engineering ===
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.  
This class is a refinement of the general geometry at work in the ''Constitution''-class, with two long, slender nacelles and a stretched secondary hull that gives this ship the appearance of speed, while still retaining the obvious and immediate impression that it is absolutely a Federation starship. She would eventually prove to be the inspiration for the later ''Sovereign''-class.


This class was initially developed to test the efficacy of what was then-dubbed transwarp drive, an engine design that went far beyond the speeds of “standard” warp drives, which used symmetrical semi-toroidal warp nacelles to create a more complex warp field geometry that would achieve greater efficiency than the various other configurations which had been tried. Projections for this were that the ship would be able to achieve speeds up to ten times greater than the Constitution-class. While it did provide substantial gains in speed, the Excelsior-class ended up being only three times as fast as her predecessor, and this was only after extensive calibrations and experimentation. Still, this led to the end of the Cochrane Warp Scale and the introduction of the Revised Warp Scale.  
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.


These ships have seen service for so long that their design characteristics are very well-known, which has eased maintenance needs as they have aged. They are still more intensive than more modern ships of their size, but their minimum crew requirements have been reduced from 380 to 200 (in terms of engineering personnel) with more automation. This was beneficial during the Dominion War, as it allowed them to pare down their crew sizes to help man ships coming off the assembly line and out of the mothball yards.
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.  


These ships contain three shuttle bays, one forward in the neck which also connects to secondary cargo bays, one aft which is the primary facility for small craft launch and retrieval, and a larger bay in the undercut of the secondary hull that also connects to the main cargo bays.
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.  


Excelsior-class ships have received incremental upgrades over the years to nearly every system, which has led to considerable internal variation among the vessels of this class.
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 ''Excelsior''-class starship was the first vessel to be equipped with the Type-VIII phaser ball turrets, which offered a considerable improvement over the earlier Type-VII banks in use aboard the ''Constitution''. These were mounted in ten double banks on the dorsal and ventral surfaces of the saucer, as opposed to just six on the Constitution, as well as four single banks on the ventral surface of the engineering hull. In addition to this, there are six torpedo launchers, two standard mounts fore, and aft, as well as two retractable mounts in the forward shuttle bay.
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 ship was also initially built with the most powerful shielding available, which made her one of the most powerful ships in the quadrant, more than a match for a comparable Klingon or Romulan design. As they were upgraded over the years, they remained a sturdy cruiser for large fleet engagements, though a number of them were destroyed.
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.


By 2399, most of these vessels have received the upgrades developed for the USS ''Lakota'', including phasers that have been upgraded to Type-X standards mounted in the same position as emitter banks as the original ball turrets. They also have the ability to fire quantum torpedoes, though they seldom carry them.
=== 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.


''Excelsior''-class ships are often used for pirate interdiction, customs inspection, and general patrol duties.
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.


=== Shipboard Life ===
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.  
Though she has proved venerable in service, the ''Excelsior''-class is still an old-style starship and has more cramped interiors than other more modern vessels. As her crew requirements have lessened, some improvements have been made to their accommodation standard, but enlisted personnel still generally sleep in bunk rooms and ensigns and junior lieutenants share quarters. They have been retrofitted with holodecks and other modern conveniences, but lack the shipwide holographic projectors common to other ships.


''Excelsior-''class medical facilities are well-equipped, which makes them suited for humanitarian missions. They also have ample cargo space, which can be used as emergency triaging facilities or to transport cargo in bulk. Because of this, these ships are often sent on transport or mercy missions, and their crews don’t see a lot of combat.
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.


Officers aboard these vessels tend to be quite junior, as it’s not a particularly important posting. Some captains are brand new and some have been aboard their ships for 20 or 30 years, however, as the sentimental attraction to these vessels is great.
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 ==
Dubbed the Great Experiment, the ''Excelsior''-class was meant to revolutionize space travel, which it ''did'' but not to the degree that Starfleet had hoped. The new engine designs used aboard this craft led to speeds up to triple those of previous heavy cruisers, but this fell far short of the projections of speeds coming ten or twenty times that. Excelsior herself was used as a testbed for several years as kinks were worked out, but this work eventually led to the development of the Revised Warp Scale which placed Warp 10 as unlimited speed, rather than continuing to add warp factors to the previous Cochrane Scale.
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.


These ships immediately proved to be such a marked improvement over the ''Constitution'' that many ''Constitution''-class ships were retired well before their end-of-life date had been reached. Some of the advancements were applied to contemporary classes like the Miranda-class, but the new heavy cruiser design, the ''Constellation'' was a ground-up reconfiguration of ''Constitution''-class components that was thought a better use of resources than continuing to refit the ''Constitution'', so two generations of technology continued in production together for several years.  
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.


Originally designated officially as a super-heavy cruiser (to avoid the distinction of ‘battleship’), this class became the standard for showing the Federation flag for over seventy years, participating in exploratory missions and combat missions to great acclaim. Several generations of Starfleet officers cut their teeth on these ships, which has led to considerable emotional attachment to the class.
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 ''Excelsior''-class was dominant in a period of Starfleet’s history where the Federation was largely at peace, so they were rarely tested in their combat roles in any serious way, until the Cardassian Wars in the 2350s, and then later the Borg conflict, and the Dominion War, where a significant portion of them were lost.
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.


This class was succeeded in production by the ''Nebula''-class in the 2360s. With modernizations, they continue into service in the present day, though only in a fraction of the numbers they once had. It is envisioned that by 2410, this class will be fully decommissioned, as the youngest members of this class will be pushing 60 years at that point.  
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 ==


* The Excelsior-class is a very old design, but it is the first 'modern' starship design in the sense that it represents such a step above the preceding classes in terms of warp power and size. This old heavy cruiser is hanging on in the same way that modern bombers and nuclear submarines do from sheer reliability and utility. They're still relatively ubiquitous within Federation space and they're still a ship you would think twice about attacking.
* 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.
* Excelsior-class ships either have green captains running supply and patrol missions, or they have captains who have become attached to them and have served there for thirty or forty years.
* 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.
* An Excelsior-class ship is over-kill for a lot of the missions it now founds itself on, give her size and capabilities, but she frees up more modern ships to operate along the frontier. It would be very rare for a ship of this class to be sent on any sort of long-range mission in 2399.
* Because there are so many of them, ''Inquiry''-class captains range from relative novices to grizzled veterans.
* The Excelsior Refit and the Excelsior are nearly identical, other than cosmetically.


[[Category:Federation starship classes]]
[[Category:Federation starship classes]]
[[Category:Heavy Cruisers]]
[[Category:Heavy Cruisers]]

Revision as of 07:23, 1 February 2021

Fire.gif
Find him and kill him!
Someone requested this page to be deleted. Please check the article's Discussion page for details.
The Infobase Staff will be going over this article, and see if it should be be deleted.
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

Template:Specifications

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.
Retrieved from "https://wiki.bravofleet.com/index.php?title=Excelsior_Refit_Class&oldid=1910"